Improve RvR

[Trino]

People complaining about port ownership is not important enough, so nobody needs/wants to attack ports.

Problem is, that VMs, the reward for taking part in Portbattles, are much to common. Even i have a weekly VM-pension because i took part in capturing a neutral port weeks ago.

Solution: give one VM per day and port directly in the clanwarehouse of the owning clan. Make 1st rates cost 3 VMs and 2nd rates 1 VM. Keep the possibility to buy VMs for PvP Marks (with the new Patrol Mission really everyone can earn pvp marks).

Side effect: 3rd rate will become the workhorse, bigger ships become outstanding...

Edited March 26, 2018 by Trino

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Trino said:

People complaining about port ownership is not important enough, so nobody needs/wants to attack ports.

Problem is, that VMs, the reward for taking part in Portbattles, are much to common. Even i have a weekly VM-pension because i took part in capturing a neutral port weeks ago.

Solution: give one VM per day directly in the clanwarehouse of the owning clan. Make 1st rates cost 3 VMs and 2nd rates 1 VM. Keep the possibility to buy VMs for PvP Marks (with the new Patrol Mission really everyone can earn pvp marks).

Side effect: 3rd rate will become the workhorse, bigger ships become outstanding...

I do not believe that limiting who can sail first and second rates is going to improve pop levels. We've tried that before (someone other than me that remember the rare woods?) and pop points pummeled to the point where the game were basically unplayable. Or at least a skelleton of a singleplayer game. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

2 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

Limiting ships has never been loved, however fighting for regions of ressources was one of the best things in the old Western vs Eastern Alliance War.

 

back when you had to own a region to get the region bonus on crafting I think we had more fights cause folks wanted to own those regions.  I could see something like that returning. They have 25 ports that are special, they could put the RNG of crafting those ports to include the bonus you can find on AI captured ships into crafting in thsoe ports or make it the bonus you get.  Than folks will want to own those ports to get that bonus.

[Slim McSauce]

7 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

back when you had to own a region to get the region bonus on crafting I think we had more fights cause folks wanted to own those regions.  I could see something like that returning. They have 25 ports that are special, they could put the RNG of crafting those ports to include the bonus you can find on AI captured ships into crafting in thsoe ports or make it the bonus you get.  Than folks will want to own those ports to get that bonus.

Again, another example of a great feature taken out for whatever reason that is exactly what we need now. Why do we even have RNG bonus refits when this is an option?

[Trino]

19 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

You can convert pvp marks into VMs now.

Right now you get 1 VM each week. So you are allowed to craft 1 first rate every 7 days. Your proposal, 1 VM every day, will allow me to build 1 first rate every 9 days. Hardly it will make it a noticiable difference.

 

Sorry for that. I forget the words "per port"

so i meant: 1 VM per day and owned port to the clanwarehouse. So f.e. A 10 member clan that owns one port can craft a firstrate every 3 days, so every member has to wait 30 days for his first rate.

But pleas dont lets discuss the exact amount of VMs ... lets just discuss if there are too many VMs in the game or not.

[Trino]

5 minutes ago, Slim Jimmerson said:

Again, another example of a great feature taken out for whatever reason that is exactly what we need now. Why do we even have RNG bonus refits when this is an option?

I think first we should remember the "whatever reason" ... maybe this could help to save time ?

[vazco]

Solution is to make ports mean something, VM's are just a patch for the problem. 

Once you conquer a port, your clan should be able to get most goods from this port (though not all). This way capturing eg.  Cartagena would mean something, as alts wouldn't steal your nation's goods. 

 

Only some percentage of resources can go exclusively to clan though, as otherwise one clan could get a huge advantage in RvR. 

[Christendom]

Surefire ways to fix RVR (and the game) - 

Get rid of the marks system.  PVP and VM.  Bring back chest rewards for PBs and being on the leader board.  Introduce a quest or something where you can kill 1, 2, 3...whatever players a day and you receive a chest with paints and cool stuff.  To curtail farming you change combat news to include the attacker and the victim.

Crafting regions.  More ports the produce desirable goods.  Restrict crafting inside safe zones and force players to craft outside of them.  Make ports matter again.  Other than a handful of ports that pay for themselves, the vast majority of them don't.  

Removal of nations.  11 nations - 650 MAX players on at 1 time to fill them.  Do the math.

Use nations as a backdrop, not a deciding factor in RVR.  Move to a clan based system where clans own the ports and ACCESS to the ports.  Introduce clan alliances (limited of course).  Clans who want to own ports and RVR need to accept the same rules that impossible nations currently face.  Lose all your ports?  back to KPR you go.  

Introduce a reputation system where players can attack others within their nation.  Kill enough and you're an outlaw limited to free towns and clan owned ports.

Remove these ridiculous repair, thickness and pen metas and just go back to simple cheap to make and lose ships with cheap mods.  

Remove patrol zones and make players fight on the OW again.

Edited March 26, 2018 by Christendom

[vazco]

16 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Surefire ways to fix RVR (and the game) - 

Get rid of the marks system.  PVP and VM.  Bring back chest rewards for PBs and being on the leader board.  Introduce a quest or something where you can kill 1, 2, 3...whatever players a day and you receive a chest with paints and cool stuff.  To curtail farming you change combat news to include the attacker and the victim.

Crafting regions.  More ports the produce desirable goods.  Restrict crafting inside safe zones and force players to craft outside of them.  Make ports matter again.  Other than a handful of ports that pay for themselves, the vast majority of them don't.  

Removal of nations.  11 nations - 650 MAX players on at 1 time to fill them.  Do the math.

Use nations as a backdrop, not a deciding factor in RVR.  Move to a clan based system where clans own the ports and ACCESS to the ports.  Introduce clan alliances (limited of course).  Clans who want to own ports and RVR need to accept the same rules that impossible nations currently face.  Lose all your ports?  back to KPR you go.  

Introduce a reputation system where players can attack others within their nation.  Kill enough and you're an outlaw limited to free towns and clan owned ports.

Remove these ridiculous repair, thickness and pen metas and just go back to simple cheap to make and lose ships with cheap mods.  

Remove patrol zones and make players fight on the OW again.

If you agree that the issue is that RvR and capturing ports has no meaning, your suggestion changes everything without solving the problem. It creates some new issues though, eg. snowballing of RvR advantage on clan level. 

Edited March 26, 2018 by vazco

[GrubbyZebra]

18 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Surefire ways to fix RVR (and the game) - 

Get rid of the marks system.  PVP and VM.  Bring back chest rewards for PBs and being on the leader board.  Introduce a quest or something where you can kill 1, 2, 3...whatever players a day and you receive a chest with paints and cool stuff.  To curtail farming you change combat news to include the attacker and the victim.

Crafting regions.  More ports the produce desirable goods.  Restrict crafting inside safe zones and force players to craft outside of them.  Make ports matter again.  Other than a handful of ports that pay for themselves, the vast majority of them don't.  

Removal of nations.  11 nations - 650 MAX players on at 1 time to fill them.  Do the math.

Use nations as a backdrop, not a deciding factor in RVR.  Move to a clan based system where clans own the ports and ACCESS to the ports.  Introduce clan alliances (limited of course).  Clans who want to own ports and RVR need to accept the same rules that impossible nations currently face.  Lose all your ports?  back to KPR you go.  

Introduce a reputation system where players can attack others within their nation.  Kill enough and you're an outlaw limited to free towns and clan owned ports.

Remove these ridiculous repair, thickness and pen metas and just go back to simple cheap to make and lose ships with cheap mods.  

Remove patrol zones and make players fight on the OW again.

Pretty much sums it up....

[GrubbyZebra]

2 minutes ago, vazco said:

If you agree that the issue is that RvR and capturing ports has no meaning, your suggestion changes everything without solving the problem. It creates some new issues though, eg. snowballing of RvR advantage on clan level. 

explain please. Thx.

[Trino]

I often read "ports have to be meaningful" but this game is about sailing ships, what could be more meaningful than to make big ships depending on portownership? Everything else is just cosmethic ... maybe im wrong, but i think nobody who dont do PBs now will do it if you give him some paints, chests or other just nice to have stuff, not in the long terms ...

[Capt Jubal Early]

Personally I think first rates are boring af. There fairly worthless and make no odds to me from a money making point of view.

 

There needs to be a better reward systems or reason for owning a port. What peeps suggested about monopolies was a dam good start. 

[vazco]

2 hours ago, Trino said:

I often read "ports have to be meaningful" but this game is about sailing ships, what could be more meaningful than to make big ships depending on portownership? Everything else is just cosmethic ... maybe im wrong, but i think nobody who dont do PBs now will do it if you give him some paints, chests or other just nice to have stuff, not in the long terms ...

Exactly. Now you need only 3-4pets to build up economy. All other ports don't have meaning. Once they give you a bonus to easier or cheaper building strong big ships, they start to get meaning. 

Monopoly thread explains it well. 

[vazco]

3 hours ago, BPHick said:

explain please. Thx.

The issue raised here is that capturing ports don't have a meaning. It's best to address this with a simple and fairly small change, as changing everything will create more problems than some. 

 

To design a good mechanic you need to identify problems first and then solve them. Changing things all the time doesn't result in a good game. Devs luckily learned this. Community didn't. Everyone has a list of complex changes which take time, implement cool stuff, but don't solve problem and don't reach predefined goals

[Fenris]

4 hours ago, Trino said:

People complaining about port ownership is not important enough, so nobody needs/wants to attack ports

Ofc they do, because 90% of all ports have no value. As long this issue isn`t solved, there will be no conquest.

 

4 hours ago, Trino said:

Problem is, that VMs, the reward for taking part in Portbattles, are much to common

They aren`t common. Some nations need to "trade" ports to get marks, and some nations need fake attacks/defends on ports to get them. and many players dont get any marks at all.

 

4 hours ago, Trino said:

Solution: give one VM per day and port directly in the clanwarehouse of the owning clan

No way. Can easily be abused in any way.

 

[GrubbyZebra]

1 hour ago, vazco said:

The issue raised here is that capturing ports don't have a meaning. It's best to address this with a simple and fairly small change, as changing everything will create more problems than some. 

 

To design a good mechanic you need to identify problems first and then solve them. Changing things all the time doesn't result in a good game. Devs luckily learned this. Community didn't. Everyone has a list of complex changes which take time, implement cool stuff, but don't solve problem and don't reach predefined goals

Lots of words, little substance.

Making ports have meaning beyond own a port, get a 1st rate, means changing the trading and economic systems in a fundamental way, which would require complex, but not complicated, changes. Just because you don't like/agree with the goal, doesn't mean it isn't predefined or even well understood.

I'm not sure what the devs have learned at this point, since they seem to be rehashing mechanics and ideas that have already been tested and removed from the game.

[Batman]

2 hours ago, Fenris said:

Ofc they do, because 90% of all ports have no value. As long this issue isn`t solved, there will be no conquest.

 

 

The problem is - we have way to many ports. Remove some of the useless ports that are very close together (just look at Tumbado/Mugeres/Conttoy for example). This will lead to more fights over the ports that are left on the map and thus create more hotspots.

[NethrosDefectus]

19 hours ago, Slim Jimmerson said:

Again, another example of a great feature taken out for whatever reason that is exactly what we need now. Why do we even have RNG bonus refits when this is an option?

Was the problem not that everyone switch to the nations that had the best regions as opposed to taking the regions? I'm not certain it did anything to encourage RvR.

[Nelsons Barrel]

13 minutes ago, NethrosDefectus said:

Was the problem not that everyone switch to the nations that had the best regions as opposed to taking the regions? I'm not certain it did anything to encourage RvR.

That is/was a problem resulting out of the existence of alt accounts in the first place. I am still convinced this game would be much better without them. Lots of exploits would have just not exist, economy would matter more, RvR would matter...

[GrubbyZebra]

4 hours ago, NethrosDefectus said:

Was the problem not that everyone switch to the nations that had the best regions as opposed to taking the regions? I'm not certain it did anything to encourage RvR.

Well, now that it costs $20 to do that, I think it would be less of an issue

[victor]

23 hours ago, Christendom said:

Restrict crafting inside safe zones and force players to craft outside of them. 

This will be the death of the game, since it will scare away a lot of causals. Plain and simple. Adding bonus for crafting in some regions would be enough to attract dedicated and clan crafters.

Edited March 27, 2018 by victor

[Trino]

On 26. März 2018 at 4:09 PM, Sir Texas Sir said:

back when you had to own a region to get the region bonus on crafting I think we had more fights cause folks wanted to own those regions.  I could see something like that returning. They have 25 ports that are special, they could put the RNG of crafting those ports to include the bonus you can find on AI captured ships into crafting in thsoe ports or make it the bonus you get.  Than folks will want to own those ports to get that bonus.

But why should the nations fight for ports that grants crafting boni if they refuse to fight for ports that grants rare and powerful upgrades (Cartagena)?

[Slim McSauce]

Just now, Trino said:

But why should the nations fight for ports that grants crafting boni if they refuse to fight for ports that grants rare and powerful upgrades (Cartagena)?

you're comparing every port the top of the top ports in terms of value.

The reason people don't attack cart is because they likely have no chance of taking it and if they do it will be taken back by the big RVR nations. Also its far away for 80% of the map.

Difference is any nation can easily link a region for a crafting bonus that's right on their doorstep, and they'll do that because linking ports together is fun (see connect 4, tick tac toe or match 3)

[Tiedemann]

Getting players together to defend ports is often a hell of a lot easier than getting players together to grind hostility..

If hostility and the hostility missions are going to stay as they are now,  why not make them more attractive!? Those missions should have the absolute best loot possibility! They are very risky (depending on the importance of the port your grinding ofc) and that you can attack OW fleets outside your capital and get better loot than in those hostility missions is just stupid..

So turn up the drop chanse for GOOD!!! books and upgrades a lot in the hostility missions, and as a absolute minimum those AI ships should have a decent amount of repair on them. 

Then you can start considering if active hostility missions (with players inside) should pop up on the map as small red dots