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If we have to live with Reinforcement Zones then...


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6 hours ago, Sir Hethwill the RedDuke said:

- zone nation players can call reinforcements as normal when they are attacked - keep as it is now.

Reinforcements needs buff. Give it epic event AI with +100BR over the enemy player/s. Or just bring back the 1. rates, they could at least protect players..

A different approach/ideology for "The safe Zone":
I think it would be better if the reinforcement zone was a real safe zone! So enemy players in a nations safe zone should not have the option to attack anything! Only the safe zone nation players should have to option to attack enemy players if they feel like it. Missions should instant close and the safe zone should be large enough for the PvE'ers to do all their missions within it. Content within the safe zone should be limited to mission PvE only.
AI fleets should no longer sail into enemy nations safe zones and offering them self on a silver plate like they do now! AI fleets should only sail between their own ports and "patrol" their nations waters. It should be impossible to get sealed bottles within the safe zone! If they want easier xp, gold and loot from AI fleet farming and sealed bottles they should be forced out of the safe zone.

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I respect that view but I will respectfully disagree.

Some degree of risk is needed alongside some measure of safety. Again, reinforcements are not replacements. NA is for players to play, not for AI to play.

100% safe is not the Caribbean server.

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1 hour ago, vazco said:
  • in RvR wolves like to eat wolves, there's no problem in that

How many times have the most profitable ports been attacked?

Today most profitable ports

Most profitable ports
Port Revenue
Puerto de España 5315874
La Navasse 3458315
Santo Domingo 2915926
Maracaibo 2823205
Cartagena de Indias 2620983
Santa Fe 1841721
Saint-Louis 1814873
Saint John's 1330287
Bridgetown 1177513
Little Harbour 1145925

Let me answer. These ports were attacked.

  1. Puerto de España - 3
  2. La Navasse - 2
  3. Santo Domingo - 4
  4. Maracaibo - 4
  5. Cartagena de Indias - 8
  6. Santa Fe - 0
  7. Saint-Louis - 4
  8. Saint John's - 0
  9. Bridgetown -1
  10. Little Harbour - 5

8 times (Cartagena de Indias) for 224 days.

Perhaps wolves believe that these ports are protected by sheep or there is no fun to fight for these ports.

1 hour ago, vazco said:

Everyone says that wolves don't like to eat wolves. I say that it's only a not proven theory. Why?:

I do not know many people who have fun when they lose. Where are the best chances to win. I think that in an open mission. Almost sure that the majority of players believe that many missions in the green zone :)

What are the chances of winning a wolf over a wolf? What do you get if you lose?

I think 50%, and you will only get experience. Will this be enough to get a new ship and modules?

Edited by qw569
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1 minute ago, qw569 said:

How many times have the most profitable ports been attacked?

How many times a port gets attacked on average? What are the most attacked ports? Let's compare data :) 

 

2 minutes ago, qw569 said:

I do not know many people who have fun when they lose.

It's about the fight :) Anyway, it's your theory against mine. I believe my arguments are quite strong. You probably believe the same about yours. Without data, we won't know. We should test this before designing a system which only feeds sheep to wolves :) (and I feel that we kind of did with PvP patrols, before they were broken by meta).

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1 minute ago, vazco said:

 

 

It's about the fight ...

then  nobody would screen. and the ones in the pb would rage when no enemy show up while screened out.

Edited by z4ys
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2 hours ago, qw569 said:

Let me answer. These ports were attacked.

I did search for a few ports which were most contested when I was fighting in Prussia:

  • Parrot Cay - 3 port battles, recently we were grinding hostility for a few weeks and we got a lot of PvP there, not many PB's though
  • Blondel Cay - 6 port battles, mostly between elite Rubli and Prussian elite fleet
  • Salina Point - 10 port battles, started by Pirates against strong Prussian fleet (they chose to fight "elite")

They don't differ much from the ones you listed.

In the same time almost noone fought eg. with the Commonwealth, which would be easy picking then and auto-victory. 

I bet that the most contested ports were contested by two strong teams, or by a weaker team contesting the stronger one. It would mean that wolves like fighting wolves when there's some meaning behind it :) 

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2 hours ago, vazco said:

How many times a port gets attacked on average? What are the most attacked ports? Let's compare data :)

From 1 Jan 2018 - 14 Aug 2018 was 838 battles

Top 20 ports ordered by number of PB
Port Number of PB
Little Cayman 15
North Inlet 14
Salina Point 10
Harbour Island 10
Bensalem 9
Manataca 9
Haulover 9
Little River 9
Cartagena de Indias 8
El Toco 8
Walker's Cay 8
Cayman Brac 8
Chinchorro 8
Píritu 8
Arthur's Town 8
Vieques 7
Mimbres 7
William's Bay 7
Nippes 7
Alabaster Rocks 7
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6 minutes ago, qw569 said:

From 1 Jan 2018 - 14 Aug 2018 was 838 battles

Top 20 ports ordered by number of PB
Port Number of PB
Little Cayman 15
North Inlet 14
Salina Point 10
Harbour Island 10
Bensalem 9
Manataca 9
Haulover 9
Little River 9
Cartagena de Indias 8
El Toco 8
Walker's Cay 8
Cayman Brac 8
Chinchorro 8
Píritu 8
Arthur's Town 8
Vieques 7
Mimbres 7
William's Bay 7
Nippes 7
Alabaster Rocks 7

Thanks for great data :) 

It doesn't look so pessimistic :) It looks like:

  • Little Cayman was contested by GB/Russia/Spain - more or less even
  • North Inlet by Russia/Spain/Pirates, mostly when they were strong
  • Salina by Pirates/Prussia elite fleets - definitely even in my opinion
  • Harbour Island by GB/US/Spain - that's in my opinion quite equal as well

Again, I would risk a statement that wolves like fighting wolves when there's some meaning behind it. 

If this statement is true, it could be enough to give some meaning to wolf vs wolf PvP to fix things :) 

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10 hours ago, Sir Hethwill the RedDuke said:

... make the leap of faith and lets end this once and for all. If people want to live in the capitals all the time, let them.

I suggest the following changes to how the Zones work 

- remove the extra zones. One nation one zone, not two separate ones. So no Belize, New Orleans, Campeche.

- end the separation between Reinforcement and Capital zones. Make them all the same.

- no fishing possible in the Zone

- enemy players can press Attack against any ship in the zone

- enemy ships cannot enter any ongoing battle happening in the enemy Zone - raiders must stick together and get pulled together, declaration of intent. Press Attack, stick together, no more OW battle invasion easy farming.

- zone nation players can call reinforcements as normal when they are attacked - keep as it is now.

- player of the Nation zone can enter at any time. 

 

 

 

LOL.

So basicly. Keep the Reinforcement Zones but make them even more Useless then they are already ?

 

You guys Really wont give up until you have Killed this Game completely and have driven out even the last few Players will you....

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37 minutes ago, vazco said:

Thanks for great data :) 

It doesn't look so pessimistic :) It looks like:

  • Little Cayman was contested by GB/Russia/Spain - more or less even
  • North Inlet by Russia/Spain/Pirates, mostly when they were strong
  • Salina by Pirates/Prussia elite fleets - definitely even in my opinion
  • Harbour Island by GB/US/Spain - that's in my opinion quite equal as well

Again, I would risk a statement that wolves like fighting wolves when there's some meaning behind it.

I read your messages with great pleasure. I do not agree with you, but I respect your point of view.

If wolves like to eat wolves, then why do we have so few PBs? For Little Cayman only 15 for more then 200 days.

Why wolves don't announce about their plans in global chat?  For example. We are going to make PB for Parrot Cay in 1 hour. Stop us if you can.

How long time need to find an opponent in a duel without/with sinking?

3 hours ago, vazco said:

Without data, we won't know.

What data should answer the question, do wolves like to eat each other or not?

 

Edited by qw569
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47 minutes ago, qw569 said:

If wolves like to eat wolves, then why do we have so few PBs? For Little Cayman only 15 for more then 200 days.

I can tell you why we - nations that I was in recently -  have issues with organizing PB's. It's hard to get all the players in the same time, and you need to get approx. 7 to finish hostility in a reasonable time, as well as make sure they're there the next day. Hostility is considered work and only PB is more interesting. Low number of players in Prussia (Let's say joining of Rover could change things :P), US, Dutch (I guess I can tell this now) and Sweden basically make it hard to organize things.

That's however what we were doing in Prussia at Parrot Cay - we had I think 7 hostility runs, knowing that once we leave first or second mission we'll be probably attacked by Pirates who outnumber us.

In US we went for Little Harbour and Rio Seco, as we knew it will be a challenging fight. If we wanted simpler fights, we would have chosen eg. GB or Denmark.

I can't tell for others, but in nations in which I was in last few months we were going for national interests first (of course you need some ports eg. for eco, profit or security), and interesting fights second. We didn't go for ports we knew we could capture just because we could or because we knew they had inferior enemy.

It was different with PvP - it's quite common that players group up to hunt weaker enemies, and enemy strength usually decides where to go - eg. you didn't go where you knew you would get ganked. There were a few people who didn't do this.

 

47 minutes ago, qw569 said:

How long time need to find an opponent in a duel without/with sinking?

This can be done quick, however it lacks the "meaningful" aspect.

 

Conclusion:

I think that if PvP got some meaning - eg. sinking better enemy would give you better rewards - or better position on leaderboard, and if there were means of finding other people who want to fight instead of logging in to PvE and join fights around capitals randomly, people would do this. 

Edited by vazco
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18 hours ago, Sir Hethwill the RedDuke said:

... make the leap of faith and lets end this once and for all. If people want to live in the capitals all the time, let them.

I suggest the following changes to how the Zones work 

- remove the extra zones. One nation one zone, not two separate ones. So no Belize, New Orleans, Campeche.

- end the separation between Reinforcement and Capital zones. Make them all the same.

- no fishing possible in the Zone

- enemy players can press Attack against any ship in the zone How is this different from now if they can attack in these zones it's not safe.  

- enemy ships cannot enter any ongoing battle happening in the enemy Zone - raiders must stick together and get pulled together, declaration of intent. Press Attack, stick together, no more OW battle invasion easy farming.

- zone nation players can call reinforcements as normal when they are attacked - keep as it is now.

- player of the Nation zone can enter at any time. 

I would keep the extra zones, remember those nations (Brits, French, Spain, US) are suppose to be the core starting Nations for new players and easy mode after all.  Though I would do only the nation capital zone make it a big PvE only zone and the secondary zone will be the Safe/Reinforcement zones that can have PvP but special engagements rules.  For US the way you can split is make anything north of the Capital PvE only any South down to St Mary the PvP special engagement zone (what we have as reinforcement zones).  

You can keep the small safe zone around the second capitals of French, Spain and Brits (Well Belize).  Since these are not the main capitals they don't need the full safe zones as the main areas need for new players and casuals.  Normally if your at these zones your not a new player but you could still be a casual.

US needs to not have a gap around it's capital, that gap on both sides is pretty much the death zones that hunters sit in waiting for folks to come and go from reinforcement zones.  It's made the perfect breeding grounds for the lazy hunters.

This might be out dated but here is a copy of the current zones.

image.thumb.png.2bd52d0f9e27f8b96b4cb34fa8a63969.png

50% of the sales of this game is US player base, that is why they keep up numbers, but the problem is retention of those players.  If we don't keep the players we don't keep numbers.  Those players could later move on to other nations.  Farming the crap out of one nation cause it always has players does nothing to get the numbers up in this game and causes more and more folks to leave..  Most of ya'll never see this cause your nation doesn't get all the new players that come in or the farming that they see.  British does see it a little but not to the scale US does.  There is a problem when 50% of your sales is US but it doesn't make up 50% of your game population.  Hell I'm going to bet it doesn't even make up 25% cause of retention of players.

As for why PvP players don't attack each other?  It's cause they are lazy. I said this over and over go put agro on Nassua, Cart, Estro's, Little Harbour and I'll promise you will get players to come out and PvP you.  If one stupid AI mission kills you than you are in the wrong game, cause this game does have PvE element and guess what some times you have to do some freaking work to get something.  Just tonight some US tried to agro Ays and got curbed stomp by Prussians and French.   While US does at times have the numebrs, they do not have the expierence players.  Let me ask this, if those two nations want PvP so bad why have we never truely seen any Prussian/French wars, all we see if Prussians riding French coat tails to get easy PvP?  You think the Vets would think lets help this strugglign nation out and fight these other vet players.   Moral has constantly been down in US cause half the time we can't even get a PB set cause of the curb stomp we get in the OW when we try.  Than we have to deal with 5+ nations screening battles casue every one is board and want PvP.  If there is so many nations out there than there is PvP for every one.  Stop picking on the weaker nations (or expierence wise lesser nations) and grow some balls and fight some strong PvPers for once.  When a PB is set we should see 4-5 nations fighting it out side against each other not all trying to screen one nation out or the other. (this is for all nations and all PB's not just US ones).  We have to many buddies buddies going on of stronger clans/players that refuse to fight each other.  My honest opoin is there should be no allainces at all for a month and every one just kill every one....hell the server is prob going to be wipe by the end of the year any way.

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8 hours ago, vazco said:

Thanks for great data :) 

It doesn't look so pessimistic :) It looks like:

  • Little Cayman was contested by GB/Russia/Spain - more or less even
  • North Inlet by Russia/Spain/Pirates, mostly when they were strong
  • Salina by Pirates/Prussia elite fleets - definitely even in my opinion
  • Harbour Island by GB/US/Spain - that's in my opinion quite equal as well

Again, I would risk a statement that wolves like fighting wolves when there's some meaning behind it. 

If this statement is true, it could be enough to give some meaning to wolf vs wolf PvP to fix things :) 

Little Cayman half those Port battles was Russian and Spain handing the port off to each other, but yes there been a lot of fights there too cause that is a very important area for staging stuff for those nations.

North Inlet really suprise at the number but that is the port you want to take as it has the best econ value to it out of those ports.

Salina should have more ports like this that two nations just fight over

Harbour Island has never been owned by spain, that has been purely GB/US fights over it and since we took it last there been very few fights cause GB pretty much left the Shallows.  I had no plan to push any of there ports out of South Bahamas after taking this one but seem every one else did.  We where happy about these fights until they stopped other than the late night flips they tried (and how they last captured it) and that is why there is a timer on it cause if they want late night flip a port they can hit one without a timer and not an important Teak port.  

I'm really suprise US doesn't have more ports up there but the problem is timers, no one wants to stay up past midnight in US to flip those ports back and the other ports we never get the PB set cause French and Prussians come out and screen us out of the hotility and people give up and than stop trying cause they feel there is no way to beat the more expierence nations.  Specially when they team up against you.  How about this...>LET US GET THE PORT BATTLE AND THAN SETTLE IT INSIDE THE PORT?<  if the want fight so bad you think they would want the PB's to set and not just keep crushing a nation that has a very low moral as is.

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11 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

As for why PvP players don't attack each other?  It's cause they are lazy. I said this over and over go put agro on Nassua, Cart, Estro's, Little Harbour and I'll promise you will get players to come out and PvP you.  If one stupid AI mission kills you than you are in the wrong game, cause this game does have PvE element and guess what some times you have to do some freaking work to get something.  Just tonight some US tried to agro Ays and got curbed stomp by Prussians and French.   While US does at times have the numebrs, they do not have the expierence players.  Let me ask this, if those two nations want PvP so bad why have we never truely seen any Prussian/French wars, all we see if Prussians riding French coat tails to get easy PvP?  You think the Vets would think lets help this strugglign nation out and fight these other vet players.   Moral has constantly been down in US cause half the time we can't even get a PB set cause of the curb stomp we get in the OW when we try.  Than we have to deal with 5+ nations screening battles casue every one is board and want PvP.  If there is so many nations out there than there is PvP for every one.  Stop picking on the weaker nations (or expierence wise lesser nations) and grow some balls and fight some strong PvPers for once.  When a PB is set we should see 4-5 nations fighting it out side against each other not all trying to screen one nation out or the other. (this is for all nations and all PB's not just US ones).  We have to many buddies buddies going on of stronger clans/players that refuse to fight each other.  My honest opoin is there should be no allainces at all for a month and every one just kill every one....hell the server is prob going to be wipe by the end of the year any way.

I have been in hostility missions and port battles against the French that ended up having hostile French, Prussians, Pirates, and Dutch against the US. The French I hear have some of the best PvP players so why are three other Nations coming to their rescue? Because it is easy PvP marks. It’s easy bragging that they kicked our ass. Most of the PvP players that cry about getting PvP won’t even go into the patrol zones. They do not want PvP, they want easy player kills to get the PvP marks so they can get the best equipment.

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I sincerely see in the safety issue partly, again, a modding issue and in the end a reward/risk issue, both for capitols inhabitants and wolves too.

1. Reward: sinking an unarmed trader brig is worth 5 PVP marks. The same of sinking a modded Requin lead by a Vet.

Effort and risks of the two targets are simply not comparable.

 

- Possible solutions:

Permanent PVP ranking. Killing an adversary well under of your standing will be less and less rewarding. Killing someone well over your standing will be more and more rewarding. Something similar to Chess ranking system.

Moreover reward per ship has to be completely rebalanced AND some way to reward a lone captain fighting impossible odds even not sinking nobody to get a reward someway.

 

2. Risk: a competitive ship is worth over 5 mil. up to over 10 mil. This kind of risk is acceptable only for rich veterans. Sub par ship are usually not worth using. Moreover majority of the cost is devoted to mods... That are what breaking ship balance.

- Solution: rebalance bonuses and availability. To let people being able to have decent ships but not too expensive and making risking them in not optimal situations still acceptable.

 

3. Safety of Capitols: the main reason to hunt there is bound to 'gain per time ratio'.

I am sure to find targets in KPR area so potentially I have the best gain/time ratio. So I hunt there. So I end up sinking noobs, so they get even more fearful to leave safe zone, so there are even more there, so I keep going there. Recursive situation (and Brits complaining should remember too their raiding in MT area... or killing noobs close to their Capitol is sealcubbing if the victims are brits, not if they are rats?).

- Solution: more and more reasons (progression, better AI fleets/drops, better markets, anything!) to get out and SPREAD in the map. Then making very limited (as noted above) safe zones.

 

- Last note:

I would like to underline Caribbean server is a PVP one. PVP is normally being ganked and gank.

If someone doesnt like to be ganked I suggest to reroll in PVE server.

Still I suspect majority of whiners dont like to be ganked, but they WANT to have chances TO GANK if a nice and safe chance arises.

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36 minutes ago, Licinio Chiavari said:

- Last note:

I would like to underline Caribbean server is a PVP one. PVP is normally being ganked and gank.

If someone doesnt like to be ganked I suggest to reroll in PVE server.

Still I suspect majority of whiners dont like to be ganked, but they WANT to have chances TO GANK if a nice and safe chance arises.

So you're saying there's no server for those of us who want fun competetive battles?  I have no interest in either side of a "gank", because they aren't fun for either side.

 

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28 minutes ago, Barbancourt (rownd) said:

So you're saying there's no server for those of us who want fun competetive battles?  I have no interest in either side of a "gank", because they aren't fun for either side.

 

1. Competitive Battle can be PBs. Anything without a mechanic avoiding numbers matter, will end in an uneven fight. Always.

2. This is a WarGame. War is never fair nor balanced. Play Chess if you want an even 'battle'.

3. Then let's discuss about "competitive":

Hercules v Hercules is competitive? 

A 4000 hr vet. vs a 50 hr newbie can ever be?

A top geared gold 5/5 Bellona vs a basic modded 3/5 Pavel is competitive?

Where's the exact border of competition? And where the sealcubbing?

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3 hours ago, Licinio Chiavari said:

I would like to underline Caribbean server is a PVP one. PVP is normally being ganked and gank.

If someone doesnt like to be ganked I suggest to reroll in PVE server.

 Still I suspect majority of whiners dont like to be ganked, but they WANT to have chances TO GANK if a nice and safe chance arises.

In your post you have some good thoughts that can be used and talked about, but this last statement is shortsighted.

The PvE server has nothing except fighting AI and leveling your ships. Nothing more. It is not a game. It is just gather resources (no challenge) build ships and fight AI. If there was more to it, I would spend a lot of time there. If I could form fleets and engage in port battles that would be awesome. BUT THERE IS NO CONTENT ON PvE SERVER. So if we want anything at all more than just leveling up ships, the only answer is the PvP server.

   Mark my words. If the PvE server had a little more content you would probably lose 25-50% of the players on the PvE server.

   I could be wrong here but I think it is worth people’s time to give it some thought.

Edited by Old Crusty
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5 hours ago, Licinio Chiavari said:

1. Competitive Battle can be PBs. Anything without a mechanic avoiding numbers matter, will end in an uneven fight. Always.

 

Most of us don't have much opportunity to participate in port battles, and in my experience more than 90% of port battles are not contested ("empty") anyway.  I just want to roll out in some frigates and have an honorable battle with some other frigates.  Sure battles are uneven, but within reason that isn't a problem and doesn't make it a "gank".  7 frigates fighting 5 frigates is uneven, and competitive.  I've lost battles where we outnumbered by the enemy something like 7 to 2.  A "gank" is not just an uneven fight - a "gank" is an execution, with a foregone conclusion, where the target has no competitive chance.  A "gank" is not fun.  A battle is fun. 

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