PvE Server Game play overhaul

[AngryPanCake]

I was hoping once the PvP game play has been established in a such way most PvP'ers are satisfied, the developers would turn their attention to the PvE server and its community. Though it is small compared to the PvP's, I strongly believe it will increase and retain a lot of players if improved and marketed appropriately, maybe more as an Age of sail MMO trade and combat Sim with Cooperative battles and interactive player driven economy.

Most of the ideas here are from other players that have posted in this forum, my only contribution is limited and mostly consist of my personal take of other contributors' ideas.

This is what I would suggest to improve the PvE server. Most of what is listed is already in place or was in place at some point in the past. I'm hoping this will start a good discussion on how to make the PvE server viable past the 12-18 months life span advanced by the devs during the server merger discussion a few months ago.

I have already discussed the potential of the PvE server thanks to its particular community and it's different game play, see post below:

So, here we go! Please discuss and provide constructive feedback and suggestions that would make the PvE server more attractive to non PvP game play focused players.

Career paths:

Trader: cargo hold bonus, shipping fees discounts, less combat perks availability
Navy Officer: combat XP bonus, crew bonus, more combat perks availability
Crafter: resource/crafting mats discounts, LH/Craft XP bonus, less combat perks availability

Other suggestions welcome.

REPUTATION system:

Piracy: Attacking nations other than the ones you are at war with turns you into a pirate.

Privateering: If spain is at war with Britain, get a privateering licence from Spain, then attack British ships as a privateer and earn Reputation with Spain, this will not turn you into a pirate since you had a license/Letter of Mark against Britain.

Trading: Only with nations at peace, Neutrals, Free Ports.

Smuggling: No longer risk free, enemy warships will "randomly" attack you near enemy ports (AI aggressiveness). If you see an enemy ship alter it's course and heads towards you, you know it spotted/recognized you as a smuggler.
Run away, when distance between enemy ship reaches a certain value, enemy ship abandons chase. Enemy Nation's "Customs ships" remain within a certain distance/radius from ports, if entering "customs zone" doesn't attract enemy warship then you are safe to smuggle goods in/out that port.
If enemy ships starts chasing you, sail away till you leave the "customs zone", then chase is dropped. So players are not indefinitely chased down by AI ships. No need for circles like in PB's though, you know you got out of the zone, when enemy ship gives up chase.

Out Posts: In any National, Neutral and Free Ports. Also in Nation at peace. If you have an OP in a friendly nation, then war breaks out, you won't lose it but can't use it either until peace returns.

Aggressive AI:
1- Hot Spots or aggressive AI zones: Depending on state of war with other nations, hot spots may spawn randomly for a limited amount of time in different areas and those zones will show up on the Map. They will consist of AI enemy privateers/Fleets cruising in those zones and attacking unescorted/poorly escorted Players' trade ships or warships depending on a BR scale to be determined. Obviously an AI Pickle or Privateer is not going to attack a player's Constitution. Traders/Crafters may elect to avoid those areas or escort their trade ships for protection.

2- "Notorious pirate spotted in this region" Mission: AI pirates in good quality ships will cruise in limited areas for a limited time, attacking player's unescorted trade ships posing a threat to players trade routes. Taking on the mission to go and hunt down that notorious pirate will provide good XP/gold (depending on player's BR) and Marks, upgrades, books or whatnot.

3- Customs zones listed above will also be part of the more aggressive AI to spice up the game play.

More Challenging OW combat:
Escorts for AI traders: t-cutter with 1 or 2 7th rates, t-snow with 1-2 6th rates, t-brigs with 2-3 6th rates. Occasional Indiaman with really valuable goods, but escorted with tougher squadron. Making capping/looting traders worthwhile.

Encourage player crafted ships:
Limit capturable AI ships to poor quality (fir warships, slow traders).
Better AI ships should be lootable only, but not capturable in order to encourage "better" player-built ships on the market.

Shipping:
Instead of "TelePorting", which is more like a Startrek thing than an age of sail, we may implement a way of transporting goods through "shipping" instead.
Shipping may be limited/restricted to increase the challenge, maybe 1-2 shipments per server day/reset. Also make it so it takes more or less (see below) the same amount of time a player would take to sail from port A to port B.
If it takes 1.5 RL hours to go from Cton to Habana, then the shipment should take about the same time.

1- Shipping goods through third party traders (25-30% faster than player sailing his/her own ships):
    1.1- From friendly (not at war) port with or without OP to own OP: maybe up to 4,000 tons (an Indiaman): $10-15/ton.
    1.2- From friendly (not at war) port with or without OP to another player's OP: up to 2,000 tons at $20-25/ton.
    1.3- No shipping from hostile ports.
    To make Free ports maybe more interesting, they could ship for less. Other suggestions are welcome.

2- Shipping goods through player's own ships: a player can use a single trader (up to an indiaman) to "ship" his goods from OP to OP only.
   Once selected, the ship and the goods will travel "in the background", while the player is free to craft, do combat missions, hunt other ships in the OW or sail another trader/fleet on a trade run.
   During the shipping, the player won't have access to the ship/goods until they arrive to destination. This is free, but not as fast as through third party shipping.

Hostility/wars/alliances:
Instead of the current static diplomatic situation, where everyone is at war with everyone (except free towns and neutrals), we may try a variable/changing diplomatic status. Nations randomly create alliances and wars that last a few RL days.
Players will refer to "Diplomacy tab" to find out what the status is: Peace (self explanatory), Tension (war is about to break out within 1-2 or 2-3 RL days), War (self explanatory).
According to one's prestige with a particular nation, a player can build an OP in that nation if his/her nation is at peace with it. If a nation is at war with the player's nation, the OP remains, but player can not access it until peace returns.
During the "Tension" phase, a player has to prepare and take care of business in his OP before the war breaks out, otherwise, he/she has to wait it out.

Trade goods redistribution:
Currently, most profitable goods are in National capitals. Most profitable routes are from national capitals to other national capitals with a few exceptions. Goods bought in Charleston can not be sold in any other US port with any substantial profit and vice versa.

In order to diversify the trade routes and help new players make some profits early one, maybe change the price gradient to correspond to the distance traveled.

Resource production/Crafting:
Maybe give ports certain roles/specializations:
    Nation Capitals (Industrial center): allowed buildings: Workshop, Shipyard.
    Regional Capitals (Labor center): allowed buildings: Extra Labor Office.
    Dependent ports (Resource center): allowed buildings: Mines, Forests...etc

National Trade Goods:
Spawning in regional ports (not Capitals). Transporting them to player's national/regional capitals on short trade runs with early traders (trade cutter) will provide some profit margin to get started and build up early cash capital to purchase bigger traders, warships...etc.
Transporting goods farther to foreign nation capitals should obviously provide better profit margins/returns depending on distance traveled and/or port consumption.

Resource Production:
Any resource required for crafting should be player produced only. This will encourage player driven economy. No resource or crafted goods should be produced by AI (maybe only in AI ships to be looted!).
Woods such as Live Oak, Sabicu, Caguairan...etc, should also be produced by players (I think they are already in the crafting Menu). These "premium" ship building materials should be distributed in such a way to encourage international trade during peace time and smuggling in war time.

Guns (aka cannons):
Only Basic (free) and medium 4 pders are available in Shops. Everything else is either looted from AI ships or player produced in players' workshops.

Crafting:
Should provide some craft XP to CRAFTERS. Crafting materials that require another crafted material and/or more than one resource should provide craft XP. Not much, but not zero like it is now.

 

EDIT 1: Taxes (from Patch 11.0) and Smuggling:

Most of us PvE'ers have been railing about these taxes which have been cutting 20% into our profits. However, one of the reasons smuggling existed was that people did not want to pay them. So, this is what I thought about the new Smuggling system: if successful, players smuggling into hostile, neutral or friendly ports will not pay Taxes on traded goods. This adds an incentive and a usefulness to smuggle goods in and out of ports. Remember, smuggling is no longer the passive/safe activity we have been conducting till now (see Smuggling, Customs Zones above).

This is how new smuggling is envisioned:

1- Smuggling is activated/deactivated while on a ship, not in port so it is not on all the time when checked in a home port. Reasoning: if the smuggler flag is on all the time, then a ship sailing through a Customs Zone, but not necessarily trying to enter that port will be attacked by the Customs Patrol Ship. A ship with smuggler flag on coming back to a home port will also be attacked by the Customs Patrol Ship of the player's own nation.  So smuggling is activated when a player plans to enter a Hostile/Friendly port to deliver/acquire goods and avoid paying taxes for a larger profit.

2- A player activates the smuggler flag when approaching a port, if the Customs Patrol does not bear on his ship or if his ship is not drawn into a shore battle instance where his ship is pounded by shore artillery , then the player is safe to continue on into the port and all transactions (buy/sell) are tax free. If the player is spotted as a smuggler and chased down by the customs patrol or shot at by the shore batteries, then the player sails out of the Customs area, and deactivates the smuggler flag and tries again. Obviously, the player will not be able to enter a hostile port without the smuggler flag, but will enter friendly ports and conduct trade and pay Taxes.

For Customs Zones: the same "Areas Protected By..." can be used as Customs Zones where there will be Customs Patrol Ships that will be triggered by Enemy Trade ships or Friendly traders with the Smuggling flag activated:

Smuggling should be a feature of the Merchant/Trader career path. Navy Officer and Crafter can not smuggle goods, they will have other features/benefits. Also, the trader will have at his disposal a Perk that decreases the likelihood of being discovered and can be used as one of the 5 perks...something like "Corrupt Customs Officer".

 

More Ideas to come...

 

Edited September 12, 2017 by AngryPanCake

[Norfolk nChance]

@AngryPanCake

there is a lot to unpack here and obviously a large amount of work and effort. Nice post

 

NnC

[Exodus]

Very well thought out suggestion. This is how I see the final version of NA looking. (or should look)

[Jean Ribault]

Man I really wish we had career path and reputation system.  Why don't we ?  Again....why don't we ?

Many trade goods are already profit driven by distance, not all but many.

If aggressive AI and trade patrols are to be viable, there would need to be fewer fleets on the sea.  Or trading would not be profitable enough or a viable career path.  It could be considered random though, or one in three perhaps as an example.

I'm not sure how I feel about another map, but I like many of your ideas here.

[AngryPanCake]

Also Optional PvP that was mentioned elsewhere. A player that runs into another on the OW may invite him/her to fight a PvP battle. If the other player is interested and accepts, then a PvP battle takes place, otherwise each one goes his/her own way.

[Sir Texas Sir]

On 9/2/2017 at 9:03 PM, Jean Ribault said:

Man I really wish we had career path and reputation system.  Why don't we ?  Again....why don't we ?

Many trade goods are already profit driven by distance, not all but many.

If aggressive AI and trade patrols are to be viable, there would need to be fewer fleets on the sea.  Or trading would not be profitable enough or a viable career path.  It could be considered random though, or one in three perhaps as an example.

I'm not sure how I feel about another map, but I like many of your ideas here.

Cause it's  a sandbox concept your not suppose to have careers and classes in such type games.  You should be able to do what ever you want.  Though I do agree we need a good Reputation system that so many things could be tied to in game that kinda aren't right now.  That and separate the dang combat perks and crafting.  This should be the closes one would have to classes. Your combat perks are based off your Rank so you can be a Rear Admiral and have 10 points or you can still be a 1st Lt with a few points.  Than tie in the Crafting perks to you Crafting level where you get 1 point for ever 5 levels (since we have 50 levels).  This means that Rear Admiral can have rank 50 crafting and be a master of both, but you can have the 1st Lt that is nothing but a trader/crafter and he could be maxed out crafting.

 As for another map I honestly thing the combine server with the Gulf being the PvE safe zone was the best option for the game.  Even POTB had it where you had PvE safe zones unless you where certain classes that could tag out side of the red zones.    Just make it so that if you want the PvE safe zones you stay in that area or you can leave it and adventure out and play the rest of the map.  Even in the PvE zone you can set your PvP ok flag if you want to risk attack in that zone.  I'm not trying to be an ass by saying this, but I have never seen more than 150 players on PvE and most the time it's under 100.  To have a whole server and that big map for that few players is a waste of resources.  At lease for now until the game has a reason to have a full server just for a hand full of players.  Than again I think GLOBAL and EU should be merged and there should only be one server until this game is finished and goes live.  They need to stop making just a few folks happy and work for the general mass populace of the game over all.

But hay what I know if you listen to some of the PvE guys I"m nothing more than a idiot teenager ganker that just want to gank folks and be mean.   

[AngryPanCake]

27 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

...

You are aware I was talking about the PvE server, right? Rebel Witche's post I quoted was an inspiration, not my suggestion to add a new map even though I personally liked the idea.

This whole wall of words was about the PvE server with the current map. Not a new map, not 2 different maps and not about merging PvE and PvP maps.

Please stay on topic if you wish to provide suggestions/feedback in somebody else's thread.

Thank you.

 

[Sir Texas Sir]

39 minutes ago, AngryPanCake said:

You are aware I was talking about the PvE server, right? Rebel Witche's post I quoted was an inspiration, not my suggestion to add a new map even though I personally liked the idea.

This whole wall of words was about the PvE server with the current map. Not a new map, not 2 different maps and not about merging PvE and PvP maps.

Please stay on topic if you wish to provide suggestions/feedback in somebody else's thread.

Thank you.

 

I am on topic, your not going to get any new PvE content until they are done with the PvP servers.  You prob won't get content until after the game is released if it every is released. Some one brought up special classes and rules and flags and the only way they can do that is with the merge Proposal they brought up before with a PvP safe zone you can play in.   You don't get to pick who makes suggestion.   You made yours and I made mine.  To better give resources to this game they need to just merge the PvP and PvP servers and make a PvE safe zone for the players that don't want to PvP.   Than you will prob start to see more PvE content.  Until they do that you prob never going to see anything that isn't first made for PvP server and you just get the scraps. 

If I was you I would be more asking what will this next patch do to effect my server?   No one has asked what it will do for PvE server.  I get a feeling ya'll might not see anything or it might just break all types of stuff.  Though more than likely your just going to have a map full of neutral ports with a few national ports (the no captured ones).  Hay you can still set outpost in those so it should make it even more easy mode for you guys.

[Demsity]

Great post @AngryPanCake

In my opinion, many of these (if not all) would be most welcome to the PVP servers as well.

[AngryPanCake]

7 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

your not going to get any new PvE content until they are done with the PvP servers.  

thank you for stating the obvious as my very first statement was: I was hoping once the PvP game play has been established in a such way most PvP'ers are satisfied, the developers would turn their attention to the PvE server and its community.

You prob won't get content until after the game is released if it every is released. Some one brought up special classes and rules and flags and the only way they can do that is with the merge Proposal they brought up before with a PvP safe zone you can play in.  

The topic of my post is making PvE game play on the PvE server viable, again not adding a new map or combining servers, so not on topic.

You don't get to pick who makes suggestion.   You made yours and I made mine.  

Derailing someone else's topic by adding "suggestions" that have nothing to do with the original post is neither helpful nor constructive.

To better give resources to this game they need to just merge the PvP and PvP servers and make a PvE safe zone for the players that don't want to PvP.   Than you will prob start to see more PvE content.  Until they do that you prob never going to see anything that isn't first made for PvP server and you just get the scraps. 

If I was you I would be more asking what will this next patch do to effect my server?   No one has asked what it will do for PvE server.

Until they are done working on the PvP server, the PvE server will get the usual copy and paste patch. I know that, everyone knows that. Wondering how the next patch is going to affect my server is a waste of time.

 I get a feeling ya'll might not see anything or it might just break all types of stuff.  Though more than likely your just going to have a map full of neutral ports with a few national ports (the no captured ones).  Hay you can still set outpost in those so it should make it even more easy mode for you guys.

Again, if you could please provide feedback and suggestions about the OP proposal, that would be most welcome.

Thank you.

[Jean Ribault]

11 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Cause it's  a sandbox concept your not suppose to have careers and classes in such type games.  You should be able to do what ever you want.  Though I do agree we need a good Reputation system that so many things could be tied to in game that kinda aren't right now....

 

Maybe.  But that's not the ostensible reason.  Devs said they couldn't implement it, or actually what they said was that others couldn't do it well in other games.  So this dev team won't try.  Had nothing to do with sandbox, they said they won't do it because it seems hard.  Sounds like a copout to me.

I don't agree with your premise anyway.  Sandbox is not mutually exclusive from a career.  It simply means coining the career into predefined slots is not desirable.  But allowing you to make your career and giving you the proper tools to create that.  You need to expand your thinking a little STS, then you can see it.  You're too close minded, all you can see is pvp.

Edited September 4, 2017 by Jean Ribault

[Jean Ribault]

On ‎9‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 2:58 PM, AngryPanCake said:

...

Encourage player crafted ships:
Limit capturable AI ships to poor quality (fir warships, slow traders).
Better AI ships should be lootable only, but not capturable in order to encourage "better" player-built ships on the market.

...

Shipping:
Instead of "TelePorting", which is more like a Startrek thing than an age of sail, we may implement a way of transporting goods through "shipping" instead.
Shipping may be limited/restricted to increase the challenge, maybe 1-2 shipments per server day/reset. Also make it so it takes more or less (see below) the same amount of time a player would take to sail from port A to port B.
If it takes 1.5 RL hours to go from Cton to Habana, then the shipment should take about the same time.

1- Shipping goods through third party traders (25-30% faster than player sailing his/her own ships):
    1.1- From friendly (not at war) port with or without OP to own OP: maybe up to 4,000 tons (an Indiaman): $10-15/ton.
    1.2- From friendly (not at war) port with or without OP to another player's OP: up to 2,000 tons at $20-25/ton.
    1.3- No shipping from hostile ports.
    To make Free ports maybe more interesting, they could ship for less. Other suggestions are welcome.

2- Shipping goods through player's own ships: a player can use a single trader (up to an indiaman) to "ship" his goods from OP to OP only.
   Once selected, the ship and the goods will travel "in the background", while the player is free to craft, do combat missions, hunt other ships in the OW or sail another trader/fleet on a trade run.
   During the shipping, the player won't have access to the ship/goods until they arrive to destination. This is free, but not as fast as through third party shipping.

...

 

Guns (aka cannons):
Only Basic (free) and medium 4 pders are available in Shops. Everything else is either looted from AI ships or player produced in players' workshops.

Crafting:
Should provide some craft XP to CRAFTERS. Crafting materials that require another crafted material and/or more than one resource should provide craft XP. Not much, but not zero like it is now.

 

 

 

So, spotlighting a couple items here.  By the way, well constructed post.

Crafting exclusives: The player crafted ships points you mention above are good suggestions for change and would be welcome.  Perhaps if there were more player base these wouldn't be as necessary, but just like on the pvp servers not enough sales from ships makes this a dead-end career path as a ship builder.  It's a more pronounced thing on the pve server however, so a necessary change IMO.

Along the same lines your suggestions for guns, good.  Someone should be able to specialize in those items crafted too, absolutely, a gunsmith if you will.

Crafting XP: It goes without saying, everyone I think is disappointed in the change since the last patch that eliminated it.  This was a failed change, and everyone knows it.  All new players should have a good path forward, even with small steps in crafting XP, and limiting crafting XP is not a good move for them.  Probably was one of the moves to limit so many 1st 2nd and 3rd rates on the water, but still not a good way to do it.  I would rather see much more depth added to the crafter's career (yes, what some may call "grinding", but I don't care, I prefer to call it "depth" - people, you don't have to have everything right now as soon as you start, earn it instead).  Make the crafter's career long and with many, many milestones, in all categories.  Could be an entirely new suggestion (I have a similar suggestion for building tycoon).

Shipping: I've been thinking about this one a lot.  At first I was thinking that shipping could be added as a potential career path.  But after a while I came to a conclusion that it simply cannot provide enough depth for a career, and there's a very slim chance devs would invest any time at all into it.  Some chance it could work, but not enough.  However I would like to see shipping implemented in some form or another.  We used to have a very simple shipping tool for goods from free port to free port.  It cost a little gold and was guaranteed delivery.  There have also been many suggestions for shipping over the months of time in game.  But we have nothing.  I think some form of shipping should be entitled in game, and your suggestion above is not bad.  However, I would like shipping rights to be earned.  Earned by your reputation when it comes to enemy nations, and earned within your own nation via rank of some sort.  Call it a shipping rank.  But this would be the "career" part.  And this touches on the things this game is missing from a career-minded pve player: we need to build upon different aspects of our game, with achievements or ranks or XP of some sort, including such things as shipping rights.  I don't understand why people are continuously asking for content in this game (like this, for example) and all we keep getting is flip-flopping of RVR mechanics.  Why, oh why, aren't careers and different XP paths implemented in this game?  So much potential, but missing so much.

[Sir Texas Sir]

3 hours ago, AngryPanCake said:

Again, if you could please provide feedback and suggestions about the OP proposal, that would be most welcome.

Thank you.

Dude eat a snickers your seem a little pissy in the morning.   And this is exactly why we don't take many of you PvE guys serious.  You say we are a bunch of teenagers that have hard ones to gank and kill every one, but you just went on  a rant cause I made a comment about another players post in your thread that had some what to do with the topic too.  Every time some one makes a comment you don't like you go on a rant....>GUESS WHAT?<  that is acting just like an immature teenager.  This is not a Devs discussion thread so I have the freedom and right to make my own comments and suggestions.

Now if you finally going to get off your soap box I might actually read you WALL OF TEXT (as you called my post) and give some positive or negative (wait you didn't like that....with your rant) feedback on your post.  If your going to post something expect to get both from all.  Again I would be asking what will these new patches to do for you.  Like @Jean Ribault mention above most likely we won't get any special content PvP (pirates mechanics would be nice), RP/Stats (carriers are great, but we should leave it more open based with just rank and crafting perks to make your char) or any PvE:  You know what I would love more content but I think it would be best to have all resources in one place so the devs can work on it...one server and that is it.  Going on a rant cause your little server (which had a pop of 34 during US prime time last night) is dead.   Your not going to get any new content any time soon.  So about about making suggestion for PvE content that would work on all servers instead of just one server no matter if it's PvE or PvP server?

Now back to the thread I'll read over your post a bit more and add some things of my own view for helping get more PvE content on /ALL/ SERVERS.

[AngryPanCake]

[CaptainCaveMan]

AngryPanCake excellent ideas...  Don't believe that the game originally was a "sandbox" game which is why they are making a WoWS mod for the game, will have to watch and shoot!!!

Was also wondering if it is possible to transfer the XP that you get once you reach the RA rank...have been there for more than a year, keep collecting xp but there is nothing to do with it.  Could convert to trading/crafting or ship knowledge on a sliding scale.  Just a thought!!!

Edited September 4, 2017 by CaptainCaveMan

[Jean Ribault]

Would be nice to see a headnod by ADMIN to any of the suggestions above for pve server?  Or an indication if any could not work?

The pve server is currently AS successful and populated as pvp global, and should be given some design time.  Actually it's more successful than pvp global if you look at the intent, since pvp global is currently nothing more than a pve server anyway.

 

Well crafted suggestions, followed by the following Admin response, not sure why:

[            ]

[AngryPanCake]

See Edit 1 above.