How to make players come back?

[jodgi]

5 hours ago, Christendom said:

Sounds like you haven't been playing very successful MMOs

 

4 hours ago, Borch said:

Umm, what MMO's that didn't had PvE did you play?

Lol, ok. I'm half prepared to hear it isn't an MMO because it isn't also an RPG.

Aces High (and before that Air Warrior and Warbirds).

AH has an even longer track record than EVE, if such pissing contest stuff matters to you.

[jodgi]

Notice how I did not mention wot because you would go "naw, naw, mate, that's a MOBA game."

[TheHaney]

7 minutes ago, jodgi said:

Aces High

Oh my. 

Is that thing still alive? Bless it's  heart. 

[jodgi]

Just now, TheHaney said:

Bless it's  heart.

Inorite?

[Ronald Speirs]

I would love to suggest how the game should work but after 3 years of suggestions/ fixes and still the wrong approach being done to try improve the game it gets to a point of why bother when the simple things are not being done to improve the game play, better PvE content and more work done to the crafting to make it easier and far less time consuming and making more products to provide competition to make pricing more affordable without being way overpriced surely will help the OW

[Hethwill]

There's great interest in PvE content, that is good. How does that translate into the wargame pvp in the OW ? If you look to the string of changes done neither is to the satisfaction of crafters or mission runners.

For one the economy is semi player run, so prices are our own doing. Exception being the production ports. Special woods and resources remain special and due to contracts with rampant values - as everyone puts more and more cash into making sure they get their contract filled first. It is odd to say so but it is our doing.

Second, PvE zones. There's absolutely nothing a player that doesn't feel comfortable with PvP cannot do. The zones deliver everything, from trade deliveries, to crafting materials to mission running. 

Third, money is really easy to get. Any mission, at appropriate rank equal to the player rank, gives enough cash to buy appropriate ship for that rank at NPC shop price plus medium cannons.

One...single... mission. One.

Big fleets are assembled by clans of a dozen in a week. That's nation pride capital ships. In no other game can you build the best in that time frame.

Sometimes I think we have it really accessible but still it is not accessible enough for most. So what is really the issue ? Game provides a really streamlined way of doing everything in 7 days as a single player, playing everyday for 2 hours. Trade, mission, craft ships. All without having to deal with PvP.

No put PvP in the mix.

Without the need to trade outside the zone, there's no trade wars. No player made content with trade convoys as we saw so many times.

In truth, if players do not want something, they will not use that something. Why make money by deliveries if you can make twice with a mission ? Why make a mission when one cann attack a OW npc and get as much and still have the chance of "rare loot drop" ? Why even PvP at all if there's no direct consequence from the action other than ego screeshots ?

I wish the game to become more "career based" and less "do it all" based. Also wish for more balanced nation populations enforced by mechanics ( shortage/abundance of resources ).

Also wish that no "smugglers" can place contracts and must act as real smugglers.

[Sir Texas Sir]

14 hours ago, TheHaney said:

But that's literally how every successful MMO in history works. 

Unless the game is pretty much an arena based game and even some of them have PvE content to do when your not attacking other players, but you look at most REAL MMO"s not arena games they have pretty much 99% PVE content.  The PvP content is the players them selves attacking each other.  Most of the good gear you have to do elite content to get against Elite Bosses with the help of other players.  Other wise they have missions that you do in the PvP content (Kill so many players, get so many head shots, etc etc) that you have to do to get like wise PvP only gear.  Most of them lock that gear to that player and only use in the PvP ares.  

14 hours ago, jodgi said:

Lol, ok. I'm half prepared to hear it isn't an MMO because it isn't also an RPG.

Aces High (and before that Air Warrior and Warbirds).

AH has an even longer track record than EVE, if such pissing contest stuff matters to you.

I get the dog fight arena parts is pretty much all PvP but don't you have ground and sea targets that aren't run by players?  That would be PvE content I hate to tell you.  

6 hours ago, Hethwill said:

There's great interest in PvE content, that is good. How does that translate into the wargame pvp in the OW ? If you look to the string of changes done neither is to the satisfaction of crafters or mission runners.

For one the economy is semi player run, so prices are our own doing. Exception being the production ports. Special woods and resources remain special and due to contracts with rampant values - as everyone puts more and more cash into making sure they get their contract filled first. It is odd to say so but it is our doing.

Second, PvE zones. There's absolutely nothing a player that doesn't feel comfortable with PvP cannot do. The zones deliver everything, from trade deliveries, to crafting materials to mission running. 

Third, money is really easy to get. Any mission, at appropriate rank equal to the player rank, gives enough cash to buy appropriate ship for that rank at NPC shop price plus medium cannons.

One...single... mission. One.

Big fleets are assembled by clans of a dozen in a week. That's nation pride capital ships. In no other game can you build the best in that time frame.

Sometimes I think we have it really accessible but still it is not accessible enough for most. So what is really the issue ? Game provides a really streamlined way of doing everything in 7 days as a single player, playing everyday for 2 hours. Trade, mission, craft ships. All without having to deal with PvP.

No put PvP in the mix.

Without the need to trade outside the zone, there's no trade wars. No player made content with trade convoys as we saw so many times.

In truth, if players do not want something, they will not use that something. Why make money by deliveries if you can make twice with a mission ? Why make a mission when one cann attack a OW npc and get as much and still have the chance of "rare loot drop" ? Why even PvP at all if there's no direct consequence from the action other than ego screeshots ?

I wish the game to become more "career based" and less "do it all" based. Also wish for more balanced nation populations enforced by mechanics ( shortage/abundance of resources ).

Also wish that no "smugglers" can place contracts and must act as real smugglers.

You can't put a contract up with the smuggler flag, you can only put contracts up in an enemy port if it's open to all.   Though with the smuggler flag since it's kinda abused by some to force pirates to only be able to join one side (national tagging anther nation).  They should be treated as pirates while they have that flag on and can be attacked by any one, even there own nation and other pirates.

One thing about the crafting is they should tie crafting perks to your crafting rank.  Fine we have combat perks right, 10 points you get for every other level until you max out at 5 and can put them towards combat sills.  Well why do I have to reset it ever time i want to craft.  My ranks and crafting level aren't part of the same system.  Combat perks and crafting perks should be seperated.  That way a guy that never crafts and is a Rear Admiral has his 10 perks for combat.  A guy that never fights and all he does is craft/trade can have his 10 crafting perks points.  Than you have the guys like me that are maxed out in both.  That way I can do combat and crafting and not have to continue to reset my perks.  Cause of the reseting I have a dedicated crafting alt that has all the crafting perks and never leaves the docs.  Though it shouldn't be like this for the guy that has only one char, they should be able to do both without a reset if they have level up both there ranks and crafting level. It's easy give them one crafting point for ever 5 levels they game until they reach level 50 crafting.  While this is a sandbox game and you can do what every you want, it still gives folks two careers paths they can go down or they can go down both if they want.

As for Nations I wish they had national perks for being part of that nation.  Think of the refits per-wipe.   Yes I know folks will be like why do they have special powers, no think of it more like national focus in training of there navy.

British - Reload bouns

French - Accuracy bonus

Pirates - Maybe upwind or boarding Prep or my pref more crew?

Dutch/Swede/Danes - repair bonus

US - Strong Hull (more HP not thickness)

Spanish - Not sure as the hunter was turn/speed

Three new nations are hard core mode so they don't get anything special but some one could think of something for them.  

You know something like that.  Now what I would do so they aren't magic perks of the player is make it tied to crafting the ships in those nations.  You want that special pirate refited ship you need to trade for one or capture one.  You want the french fine ship that is designed to have a better fire line with it's cannons than you have to trade for one or capture it.  This would give each nation a little perk as to why to play them instead of others.  Now you can make it a player only skill so that it's not tied to the ship, but I think makeing national crafted ships would been better.  I liked the concept of the crafted refits when you made a ship, but I just didn't like them being tied to a region not a nation cause the first thing strong nations did was captured all the good refit ports.  

That and we need population incentive to play certain nations.  Do like other games, you have a small pop nation on a server give them an xp/credit boost over the high pop nations.  Though the trick is picking how to pick if it's a small pop weak nations.  Do you go by active player numbers (inactive won't work) or do you go by who owns the most ports.  I would honestly go by who owns the most ports.  The three new nations though would be exempt from this since they don't have a home capital.  It's part of playing hard core mode.

[Hethwill]

Thanks for clarification Texas.

[Sir Texas Sir]

6 minutes ago, Hethwill said:

Thanks for clarification Texas.

Yah never liked it when they where able to pre-wipe.  When we held Castries (french closes silver) to keep it out of the GB hands.  I would fill any none GB/US/DUTCH contract or tell them to just let me know and I would sale silver to them directly cause I had so much stockpiled at that port.  That and I wish we can pick and choose which contracts we can fill.  If we know it's a known alt of another nation (IE SPY/TRAITOR/SMUGGLER) we should have the option to not sale to that player and to some one else even if it means less profits. 

his is why a reputation system is really honestly needed in this game.  It could make trading/smuggling way more interesting.  You are say a pirate,  but you got great reputation with the french traders (you never hit them even protected a few) so you are allowed to go into there ports with a trade ship and trade.  Your trade reputation is neutral with the Spanish cause you never do anything with them. You still need the smuggler flag to get your trade ship into that port.  Say all you do is sink US ships, well guess what your trade reputation sucks you can't even event the ports with a smuggler flag cause they know it's you and your hated by that nation type thing.

[jodgi]

1 hour ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

the dog fight arena parts is pretty much all PvP but don't you have ground and sea targets that aren't run by players?  That would be PvE content I hate to tell you

AH maps and PvP are driven by conquest, so it's not only a dogfight arena. There is no reason to fight in AH, nothing matters and even losing airfields or the entire war is completely without meaning and consequence. <gasp>. Yet it's been going on for almost two decades while these perfect sandboxes come and go.

You're right there are some PVE elements. Ack-Ack at airfields to provide a destroyable safe-zone. Carrier groups that sail around aimlessly unless a player takes direct control. Bomber buffs can bomb HQ or factories that can influence... I forget, I've never paid attention.

This kind of PVE content is "perfect" in the sense it's completely optional. People bomb shit for the role-play or to help cap an airfield. You never NEED to PVE.

If NA was like this I would never have uttered the slightest moan about eco/pve. Average players are forced to PVE in order to pay their way not to mention grinding bots for fighting equipment required to stay competitive.

[TheHaney]

1 hour ago, jodgi said:

If NA was like this I would never have uttered the slightest moan about eco/pve. Average players are forced to PVE in order to pay their way not to mention grinding bots for fighting equipment required to stay competitive.

I hate to crap on a game that does have some good mechanics, but maybe we shouldn't focus too much on emulating Aces High...

[jodgi]

39 minutes ago, TheHaney said:

but maybe we shouldn't focus too much on emulating Aces High..

It doesn't have a big player pop any longer, it's true. It made me real sad when the euro pop almost disappeared and I couldn't realistically keep on playing with the still healthy US pop.

Keep in mind those numbers are steam only. It's only been on steam a month or two (?) and most players still download client directly and launch the old way. I could dig around if you're really interested in true numbers? Right now there are 125 guys in "open melee" room and US primetime hasn't started yet. So the steamspy (?) numbers only show an unverifiable portion of the actual server pop.

I repeat: It no longer has a large player base, I'm not pretending it does. You know why it still "works"?..

Everyone there have a common goal: To fight. There is no grinding money in safe-zone, traderunning, hauling, port-clicking and all those parallell-solo-multiplayer activities. There is always many times more action in AH with 300 guys than in NA with 2000 guys (or EVE for that matter, I think maybe EVE has a worse pvp/pve ratio than NA).

NA will never be like AH. That's not the point. Based on how time consuming putting in a way richer PVE world into NA with a corresponding "deep and meaningful" eco is, do you think it's realistic to hope for it?

[Quineloe]

Game needs more curated PVP. Preferably of course initiated by players.

[jodgi]

6 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

Game needs more curated PVP. Preferably of course initiated by players.

I'd love to help, truly. We need to liberate the fighting equipment from the PVE lords.

[Palatinose]

I truely think @fox2run could have a point. Saying that while being part of a big RvR clan and part of those mourning about roe. Perhaps someone could enlighten me briefly on the times when player count was pretty high? What were the differences? And furthermore, why did it not work out - any more reasons than those named by fox2run (which is only one opinion)?

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 hour ago, jodgi said:

I'd love to help, truly. We need to liberate the fighting equipment from the PVE lords.

YOu mean the same guys that are having a fit cause we now have PvP items that they think are OP.   They kinda can be, but we need more of the items they get from grinding in that shop so we don't have to grind.  We can buy them with PvP marks instead.   That and I think the PLVG needs to be a BP for 150 marks not just a ship.  I won't buy it for just one ship. I would if it was the BP though.

OK and why have never got an answer @admin about paints?  Where have they gone?  if you have a new system for them than keep them in until the new system comes.  If not than bring them back and put them in epic event chest, treasure chest and bought through PvP marks. I bet you I could trade a sought after paint for a sought after mod they got from grinding pretty easly.  We need more stuff to trade back to get the PvE content from them.  The cost of the PvP content is so high there is no way I'm going to trade with what little PvP I get in these days and the fact I have to share the marks from my kills.  I think what little I played and that been very little I gotten 2 dozen PvP marks from a few port battles and a few OW fights.

[Slim McSauce]

Paints would be such an easy way to keep players happy for a bit. We have so many we aren't using

[Navalus Magnus]

@admin Some players might even come back if you finally impement the „new“ turning mechanics for every ship, reballance them (SOLs turn too fast in too small circles) or simply reimplement the old turning system and reballance the BR!

 

Edited December 4, 2017 by Navalus Magnus

[Navalus Magnus]

And if you want to go further, how about getting new pve content into the game - like many users already proposed!?

For example you could add trading and smuggling missions to enhance the options of making money:

 

Trading (getting goods to friendly ports) / smuggling (getting goods to enemy ports)

 

- amount of payment depending on:

a) succes

b)) distance to the destination*

c) online population at the time of signing the trading-contract*

d) weight of the cargo*

e) weather season (one could select if in "hurricane season" or not / if "hurricane" is selected one would have the chance of getting pulled into a storm / propper sailing would be necessary to get your ship out of it in one piece)

f) trading or smuggling (smuggling would earn you more money than trading)

* (propotionaly increasing payment)

 

- deadline for delivery depending on:

a) distance*

b)) online population*

c) weight of cargo*

d) weather season (increased when selected "hurricane")

* (propotionaly increasing timeframe)

 

Additional conditions for those missions:

- payment in gold and trading marks (maybe used for assets like pvp marks could give you)

- the cargo should be a reedemable item, bound to the destination and deadline of the delivery-contract

- the cargo (e.g. teak wood) thus can't be used instead of delivered

- delivered cargo transforms into port stock within 2 hours (randomly transformation within that timeframe to keep exploits inconvenient)

Edited December 4, 2017 by Navalus Magnus

[Hethwill]

9 minutes ago, Louis Garneray said:

Maybe it has been a long time since you were on PVPGlobal but the economy is not even semi player run anymore there.

The French capital has no player made ship for sale. And if I compare it to EU server, the majority of ships for sale on EU France capital are mostly cap'ed ships.

There is a better player driven market for resources on EU than Global except for the upgrades components that everybody loves (bovenwind and cartagena refit for example) which are cheap on Global compared to Eu server.

That's good. Seems people are using NPC shop ships. Excellent ! I know I do  alongside some of my collectibles. ( rip 'Caracal' Inger )

[Hethwill]

Just now, Louis Garneray said:

I'm not sure it's a good sign. If there is no player driven economy it becomes harder to build anything.

Er...We asked for it, as a whole ? To not be "hostages" crafting ? meaning single players could always buy a ship to play ? Could always capture a npc ship and keep playing ?

[George Washington]

@adminPlayers loved capturing ships and they loved security in multiple durabilities. All this kept players happy and pvp fearless. Time to review your loot tables and add many nice ships to drops. Let people farm and do activities on OS. 

So, add Note drops to fleets/pbs/pvp and add insurance. 

Edited December 4, 2017 by George Washington

[jodgi]

2 hours ago, George Washington said:

All this kept players happy and pvp fearless.

Those are some rose-tinted glasses, son.

[BallsOfSteel]

There is no incentive for level 50 crafters at all, you dont get any more building slots, you have to pay with perks for extra hours. you pay for a shipyard that comes with no space for building supplies. All basic stuff. You ability to increase buildings should be related to your level, everyone gets 5 up to level 10, 6 at 20 etc.etc. Its not rocket science.

 

 

More content is sorely needed as well. Make the map invisible till you have been places. exploration, events etc are needed badly

Edited December 5, 2017 by BallsOfSteel

[RedNeckMilkMan]

On 12/1/2017 at 8:08 PM, Christendom said:

The real problem is that other than grinding missions there really isn't any enjoyable or enthralling PVE content.  This is an MMO, PVE content keeps the fans in the seats.  No raids, no exploration missions, no delivery missions....just the same old boring sinking of AI.  They kinda are getting the idea with increased loot and difficulty in epic events, but too little too late.

Stale content = a stale game.  People stop showing up.  New ships is not content and that mindset is exactly why this game is not doing well.  

Happy PVE players make happy PVP players.  It's all about that casual content

Pretty much this. Need more to do in the game. Not more ships to do nothing with.