The state of the game and how we might move it forward.

[Guest]

This thread made me think about why I joined NA, why I played and why I left. And more importantly what I'd like NA to be again. I miss the days where there where 600-800 (sometimes even 1000 when there where multiple important PBs). I was online yesterday and there were 4 important PBs, the polish had an existential strugle in the central americas, the swedes had two ports in the lesser antilles (one of them a teak port) and there were a few minor engagements in the bahamas. Yet the player count didn't reach 500 at any port while I was on, at the top there were 490 players and three of those were me, myself and my alt. I simply will not accept so low numbers as the norm for a game I've come to love as much as I do.

Now what do I want from the game?

I want what the game was sold as: A hardcore, realistic naval warfare game.

Every single war in the history of this timeframe was decided by controlling the key access points at sea - meaning the control of commerce. The british won the war of 1756-1763 by controlling the channel and thereby the access of the americas. The british lost the american war of independence as they lost control of the access to the north american colonies (thx in a huge part to French regular troops forming a backbone for the american independence army and Comte de Grasse keeping his fleet in being as well as a decisive win at chesapeake bay). These two wars showed the french had superior privateers as they wreaked havoc on the british merchant marine, it wasn't however enough to decisively damage the british economy to the point where the british would be forced into a settlement in favour of France, instead the british managed to grind the french shipping to a halt decisively ruining the French ability to wage war (reduced the french treasury income to less than half of the prewar years). The french revolutionary wars continued the pattern, this time however the french had effectively cut the head off it's naval officers (literally speaking) but the grinding of french commerce to a halt was upset by french wins in Europe (the taking of the netherlands more than made up morst of the losses in the americas and India alone).

What does this mean to naval action and what would I like to see?

Player expectations:

This is a game where everyone gets everything from the first day or at least the first month. Players have come to expect that they should sail the largest ships for little to no effort. Why is that? - Well I'd wager that one important reason is that there is nothing to do if you can't sail the largest ships, you're not barred from some of the content - you're barred from the only content - RvR. This needs to change, both the playerexpectations and the lack of actual gameplay. Players need to accept that sailing a ship comes with the risk of losing it. They also need to accept that not everyone has to sail a 1st rate in order to be effective, sadly atm they do but that needs to change. Change the gamemechanics and you change the playerexpectations.

Nations:

Remove the cartoon nations. The playerbase isn't that large and having the historically correct nations in the carribean is what I would consider the maximum of nations, it is in terms of realism also the minimum imo. Poland-Lithuania never had a fleet (and arguably still doesn't in the NA) and so could be removed with no fuss, The prussians never had a fleet and should be removed, the Russian fleet never sailed the carribean and the russian empire never had colonies in the carribean - hence remove them all. The pirates are effectively a nation - remove their ports and allow them only to sail from freeports, do however give them the ability to hurt other nations economies by introducing raiding - a raided port ceases all production for a week for example, whilst the raided ports taxes from the past week is deducted from the owning clans warehouse (giving the owning clan a deficit if they haven't gotten enough gold) and given to the participants of the raid - I'm in favour of a collective sharing of the goods.. What would this mean for crafting in the pirate "nation"? - only from freeports and a dependancy on foreign tra(i)ders or alts to supply crafting materials.

RvR:

Well I like the fact that RvR immediately effects the opponents points of access. I dislike that it severely effects the opponents ability to wage war, atm the dutch for example has no access to Teak (disregarding alts). Imo all woods should be playerfarmed and the ability to make them should be everywhere - it shouldn't be the type of wood available to the opponent that decides the match before the battle has even begun. I dislike the imbalance of the upgrades, they should supplement a ship, not decidedly change the capabilities of a ship - hardcaps on module bonus' should/could offset the imbalance while still make some ports (like carta) attractive. The clans should be able to develop the economy in owned ports to the point where they consume european goods like the capitals. And split the servers once more - or make timers cheaper so that the defender can actually defend the ports. A solution to someone feeling left out? - wipe the map and everyone has a chance for a port again, this could be combined with removing the cartoon nations.

Economy:

Thx to reinforcementzones and capital zones there is atm no way to win or lose a war through financial warfare. If a small nation is being attacked by a larger it has no effective option but to lose its ports in a war of attrition. It cannot harm a larger one by harraguing the enemys traders to the point where the enemy is forced to come to terms. Trading effects RvR, crafting effects RvR, this should come as no surprise and smaller nations needs an effective way to counter enemy battlefleets. The magical reinforcement zones should be removed, both to honour the deal struck between the developers and the players (hardcore - REALISTIC = NO MAGIC), but also because the game otherwise will see fewer and fewer players due to the same semi-large clans/nations basically stomping on everyone else in search of content, effectively removing content in the long run. The economy needs to be balanced. My suggestion is to make carribean ports consume only european goods, goods that needs to be ordered from Europe and can be intercepted by enemy players effectively cutting off the goods from the port. The goods should go to the capital of the nation and from there be sold and redistributed to ports in the nation. Ports economical development should be decided by the application of EU goods and the maintenance of EU goods. The amount of goods should be dependant on the nations playerbase - the larger the base, the more goods with a fixed amount being distributed to the clans that own ports - the more ports owned by the clan, the more goods in order to prevent alts from buying up everything and thereby ruining the enemies chance to develop their nations ports. Every time a port is taken its economic development status should be reset making raiding of enemy ports and effective way to hurt enemy nations economic wellbeing. The owning clans would make their gold from taxes, developing the economies of their ports and from selling the allotted EU goods. In essence a prudent clan should be able to run about even with expenses and income in a balance - provided they support some of their ports financially and use other ports as product ports. The carribean should be able to produce export goods that should be delivered to the capital and twice a week the export goods should be sailed in treasure convoys to the edge of the map (8 or so random exit points for each nation so as to make interception harder). The departure time should be announced for the entire server making interception possible for the fast and crafty raider, and the amount of EU goods sent the other way should be decided by the amount of export goods making it to the exit point.

Crafting:

Remove the RNG from crafting and make the ships more expensive in terms of labour costs. Remove the 5/5 ships and instead reintroduce the refits. Except this time the refits becomes something you can unlock by building experience in the same ship/class and/or with VM/PvPm/CM. I would prefer a combination, experience makes the shipcrafter able to purchase the refit option, but the crafter would need to build up PvP marks/Victory marks in order to buy the refit. I would also suggest that the crafter only gets experience in the ship he's crafting and not the class as a whole. This would allow a crafter to specialize and the ships value would be determined by the refit, as well as a percentile increase to hp stats due to the crafters lvl of experience (thereby adding value to ships crafted by crafters not yet able to add a refit). The hp stat increase shouldn't be large with a max of fx. 5% (may be too much, but this number could be changed).

Risk versus Reward:

Atm there is little to no risk, and hence no rewards. In every game I have ever played there was a tangible reward and a calculated risk. This is not the case in naval action, which means that once people have grinded the levels, made their first couple of twenty millions and sailed every ship in the game there is little else to do and so they quit the game. Taking your four indiamans on your four alts should be a calculated risk where you can lose everything you own. Why? - because atm players are paying millions for upgrades that in reality has no value since we can all make millions from simply sailing a quick trading run. When nothing comes with a risk, then nothing matters. Make Naval Action matter again.

 

This is just my thoughts, some of them needs to be elaborated (especially the econ side), but I truly believe that the game atm is dormant and unless something drastically happens the game will simply never be what was promised from the start and from the potential the game has. So this is a call. A call to the devs to actually do something more than makeshift adjustments, a call for the players to give the game a serious thought as to how we can make it a success and a call to the community as a whole to come up with solutions. 490 players on a night where one nation were facing literal extinction, another had an important teak portbattle and a third having a shallow PB is simply not enough taking this games potential into consideration.

 

EDIT: I forgot crafting which has been added.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Guest

[Licinio Chiavari]

Great post Sir.

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, springby said:

An early access title doesnt need a high amount of players, it is the players who want more players and this is just fine and all

The day people will stop to play EA games as if they were complete done releases is the day i will cut my beard.

Actually some of the systems do. Econ is dependent on atleast qualifying amount of players in order to test the gamemechanics. The playercount collapsing is in itself an indication that something has gone wrong in the development. For testing combat mechanics you basically just need 50 dedicated testers. For testing RvR, Econ, Crafting and PvP you need 1000. Why? - Because that's the breaking point where one large clans ability to affect the economy of the entire game is limited to an extent where the game can function with smaller solo players and clans..

[Christendom]

Surprised you didn’t pull out your bit about how the merge killed the game.  Perhaps you’ve seen the light and realized that this game will never retain numbers until it protects its new players and provides dynamic content for its veteran players that isn’t stale.  Games such as this rise and fall based on how entertained it’s casual players are and NA has sorely neglected them for 2 years.  

One opinion I’ve changed on lately is that BR based battles are no longer good for the health of the game.  PBS are no longer national efforts in most cases with the average battle only needing 10 people.  Prior to the wipe and BR system it would be common to have battles involving 100 people in a area daily.  Now...not so much.

the shift to more clan based fights would be fine if we ditched nations for a clan based game, but we have yet to do that.  Now we have 10-15 people going into ports designed for 25 and a whole lot of screeners and ancillary people that used to be involved aren’t anymore.  Seems like a shame.  

Edited September 4, 2018 by Christendom

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Surprised you didn’t pull out your bit about how the merge killed the game.  Perhaps you’ve seen the light and realized that this game will never retain numbers until it protects its new players and provides dynamic content for its veteran players that isn’t stale.  Games such as this rise and fall based on how entertained it’s casual players are and NA has sorely neglected them for 2 years.  

One opinion I’ve changed on lately is that BR based battles are no longer good for the health of the game.  PBS are no longer national efforts in most cases with the average battle only needing 10 people.  Prior to the wipe and BR system it would be common to have battles involving 100 people in a area daily.  Now...not so much.

the shift to more clan based fights would be fine if we ditched nations for a clan based game, but we have yet to do that.  Now we have 10-15 people going into ports designed for 25 and a whole lot of screeners and ancillary people that used to be involved aren’t anymore.  Seems like a shame.  

Reffering to your point on BR PB's, I think if we went back to the old system, you wouldn't see nearly as many battles happening. I can guarantee that Prussian ports would eventually vanish, because we wouldn't be able to fill 25 player PB's consistently. Right now we fight probably 2-5 Port battles a week, that's a lot of lost content, and that's not even looking at other nations. 

Also it wouldn't be a solution for us to simply join a large nation, as many of our guys would probably just stop playing. We've been in large nation like GB and Pirates before, and we don't enjoy it. 

 

Edited September 4, 2018 by Guest
Typo

[Guest]

Captivating isn’t it, how far to swing the pendulum, hardcore realistic or easier arcade.

Which one will attract the players?

Can’t wait to see where the developers will head, to see the population numbers one year out from release.

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, BuckleUpBones said:

Captivating isn’t it, how far to swing the pendulum, hardcore realistic or easier arcade.

 

Which one will attract the players?

 

Can’t wait to see where the developers will head, to see the population numbers one year out from release.

 

Well the current numbers really isn't impressive.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Christendom said:

Surprised you didn’t pull out your bit about how the merge killed the game.  Perhaps you’ve seen the light and realized that this game will never retain numbers until it protects its new players and provides dynamic content for its veteran players that isn’t stale.  Games such as this rise and fall based on how entertained it’s casual players are and NA has sorely neglected them for 2 years.  

One opinion I’ve changed on lately is that BR based battles are no longer good for the health of the game.  PBS are no longer national efforts in most cases with the average battle only needing 10 people.  Prior to the wipe and BR system it would be common to have battles involving 100 people in a area daily.  Now...not so much.

the shift to more clan based fights would be fine if we ditched nations for a clan based game, but we have yet to do that.  Now we have 10-15 people going into ports designed for 25 and a whole lot of screeners and ancillary people that used to be involved aren’t anymore.  Seems like a shame.  

Actually.. If you would care to read my post.. I mention the possibility to split the servers again..

[Teutonic]

8 minutes ago, Lars Kjaer said:

Actually.. If you would care to read my post.. I mention the possibility to split the servers again..

Eh. With population how it is it would be awful. I don't believe it is a solution that will do anything except have 2 servers with less population altogether.

I entirely agree port timer costs should be cheaper OR there should be a mechanic ingame to make them cheaper.

1. Have port timers that may be larger than 3 hours but less expensive like:

150k - 8 hours

250k - 6 hours

400k - 4 hours

500k - 3 hours

2. Create incentive to capture an entire region of ports to lower maintenance for the region or other bonuses:

Capture the cartaghena region - 50% reduction to all port maintenance costs (making a no timer port 50k and a pprt with a timer 300k). Would also reduce labor and trade fee cost for port too.

Of someone came and wanted to disrupt you, your nation, or your clan they could attack a port - and your incentive is too keep the port leading to a lot of pvp and RvR content there maybe?

I am in agreement with a lot of your post - i have made a number of threads trying to suggest ways to create incentives for bonuses being intwined into gameplay like what i mentioned above. 

I also believe that the game needs more variety with the PvE content we have, and the admin is already working on that. 

[Christendom]

16 minutes ago, Lars Kjaer said:

Actually.. If you would care to read my post.. I mention the possibility to split the servers again..

Actually if you read my post I merely mentioned you are not perpetuating the same farce you've been peddling for months on the forums about how the merge killed the game.  So kudos.  

 

1 hour ago, EliteDelta said:

Reffering to your point on BR PB's, I think if we went back to the old system, you wouldn't see nearly as many battles happening. I can guarantee that Prussian ports would eventually vanish, because we wouldn't be able to fill 25 player PB's consistently. Right now we fight probably 2-5 Port battles a week, that's a lot of lost content, and that's not even looking at other nations. 

Also it wouldn't be a solution for us to simply join a large nation, as many of our guys would probably just stop playing. We've been in large nation like GB and Pirates before, and we don't enjoy it. 

 

Back in the old system there were consistently more full battles daily.  This was also in the alliance system AND other nations could pool players.  

We are currently in a situation where we are half in/half out of clan based system.  We either need to ditch the nation idea or ditch the BR/clan based idea.  The combination of both is not working.  You mention Prussia, but it seems by all accounts they shouldn't even exist in this game.  You could repeat your successes elsewhere inside one of the other nations and have similar results in this system, since you could operate all your battles within your own little group.  

[Guest]

Perhaps the thread should be split up into several subcategories? Atm we're focussing on RvR, but as far as I'm concerned RvR is the only thing that is marginally working (marginally).

What I would like to see fixed is 1. Economy - everything else is dependant on econ. 2. Crafting - I HATE rng and it's anything but realistic. 3. PvP - boxing players into "zones" is basically accepting a broken system. And ofc as the raison in the but, 4. RvR.

1 hour ago, Christendom said:

Actually if you read my post I merely mentioned you are not perpetuating the same farce you've been peddling for months on the forums about how the merge killed the game.  So kudos.  well I've been out of the game for the past couple of months.. Give me a few days to get up to speed and I'll reiterate how the merge killed the game. Which it actually did if you look at the numbers on the EU server.

 

Back in the old system there were consistently more full battles daily.  This was also in the alliance system AND other nations could pool players.  

We are currently in a situation where we are half in/half out of clan based system.  We either need to ditch the nation idea or ditch the BR/clan based idea.  The combination of both is not working.  You mention Prussia, but it seems by all accounts they shouldn't even exist in this game.  You could repeat your successes elsewhere inside one of the other nations and have similar results in this system, since you could operate all your battles within your own little group.  

I believe that the old system is the way forward. Everyone and their mother has a clan and atm the clans doesn't really "activate" or motivate or whatever we want to call it like they used to. Much of this is likely because the ports simply doesn't matter anymore, only real benefit of a port is a bill that needs to be paied and for some reason ppl dislike getting bills.

 

EDIT: Forgot RvR...

Edited September 4, 2018 by Guest

[Barbancourt]

6 hours ago, Lars Kjaer said:

Nations:

Remove the cartoon nations. The playerbase isn't that large and having the historically correct nations in the carribean is what I would consider the maximum of nations, it is in terms of realism also the minimum imo.

Why remove choices?  IMO we could use at least a couple more nations to fill out the map.  They are available for people who want them, and those who don't want them have other choices.  A problem with "nations" in the game is that they have no central authority to rule them, and if you force too many players into too few nations you get even more bickering between personalities/clans that don't get along.  And, they aren't "cartoon nations".  Some people are tickled by an exersize in alternate history.  This isn't even remotely a simulation of actual history. 

[Barbancourt]

7 hours ago, Lars Kjaer said:

Economy:

Thx to reinforcementzones and capital zones there is atm no way to win or lose a war through financial warfare. If a small nation is being attacked by a larger it has no effective option but to lose its ports in a war of attrition. It cannot harm a larger one by harraguing the enemys traders to the point where the enemy is forced to come to terms. Trading effects RvR, crafting effects RvR, this should come as no surprise and smaller nations needs an effective way to counter enemy battlefleets.

So in other words you want large or aggressive nations to be able to crush smaller nations out of existance by camping their capital waters, like we had last year before the reinforcement zones, causing may players to quit because they couldn't even sail in front of their own "capital".  I don't see how you think a small nation is going to "harrass" a large nation in its core territory - the exact opposite is going to happen. 

Edited September 4, 2018 by Barbancourt (rownd)

[Capn Rocko]

Bring back outlaw battles! 

okay I said it 😃

[Old Crusty]

4 hours ago, Christendom said:

Surprised you didn’t pull out your bit about how the merge killed the game.  Perhaps you’ve seen the light and realized that this game will never retain numbers until it protects its new players and provides dynamic content for its veteran players that isn’t stale.  Games such as this rise and fall based on how entertained it’s casual players are and NA has sorely neglected them for 2 years.  

One opinion I’ve changed on lately is that BR based battles are no longer good for the health of the game.  PBS are no longer national efforts in most cases with the average battle only needing 10 people.  Prior to the wipe and BR system it would be common to have battles involving 100 people in a area daily.  Now...not so much.

the shift to more clan based fights would be fine if we ditched nations for a clan based game, but we have yet to do that.  Now we have 10-15 people going into ports designed for 25 and a whole lot of screeners and ancillary people that used to be involved aren’t anymore.  Seems like a shame.  

I have to say I agree with almost Everything you say here except clan based system. I am however starting to think that if this game had a few thousand players that the  clan based system could replace the National system. 

   If the game becomes a hit and people start playing it, then the game to expand to all the major areas of the world and have room for more Clans and exiting Clans to spread out.

as it stands I cannot see the total Clan system working with the low population.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Old Crusty

[Christendom]

15 minutes ago, Old Crusty said:

I have to say I agree with almost Everything you say here except clan based system. I am however starting to think that if this game had a few thousand players that the  clan based system could replace the National system. 

   If the game becomes a hit and people start playing it, then the game to expand to all the major areas of the world and have room for more Clans and exiting Clans to spread out.

as it stands I cannot see the total Clan system working with the low population.

The thing about the clan based system is it needs to be one or the other.  Right now we still have nations and national ports, but PBs are locked out unless you are with or on that particular clan's ally list....making PBs and the like a clique system.  As you've seen in the US nation it's a bit chaotic with various clans disliking others.  Now multiply that and you've got GB nation.  We currently have a mix of clan based and nation based system and it just isn't running well enough.

To keep in the theme of tittybaby's post here, I would recommend either switching entirely to a clan based system and having only a handful of nations be a race backdrop OR drop the clan owned / BR PB system and focus back on the nation port system.  Less nations would also be ideal.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Barbancourt (rownd) said:

Why remove choices?  IMO we could use at least a couple more nations to fill out the map.  They are available for people who want them, and those who don't want them have other choices.  A problem with "nations" in the game is that they have no central authority to rule them, and if you force too many players into too few nations you get even more bickering between personalities/clans that don't get along.  And, they aren't "cartoon nations".  Some people are tickled by an exersize in alternate history.  This isn't even remotely a simulation of actual history. 

I'm not against choices per se, but the introduction of the cartoon nations begs a question - why stop at those? Why not China or Japan? - Both nations had larger navies than Poland-Lithuania or Prussia - as in they actually had one, and in the case of China they actually had a seafaring and explorative tradition before the 15th century. In terms of testing the economy however we need the players to be confined into smaller nations or we need a larger playerbase.

4 hours ago, Barbancourt (rownd) said:

So in other words you want large or aggressive nations to be able to crush smaller nations out of existance by camping their capital waters, like we had last year before the reinforcement zones, causing may players to quit because they couldn't even sail in front of their own "capital".  I don't see how you think a small nation is going to "harrass" a large nation in its core territory - the exact opposite is going to happen. 

Then you've never played the EU server in it's hayday. The smaller nations of today can be effectively one-ported by the larger nations (this was true, perhaps even more so in the pre-reinforcementzone days), the smaller nations however have no effective way to counter this. You state that the reinforcementzones has retained a larger number of players than the time before the reinforcementzone but the numbers beg to differ. The introduction of the reinforcementzones has seen the new merged "PvP" server hit an all time low number of players. I would wager that the reinforcementzones costs more players than it retains, and unlike you I can point to the numbers to back this up. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Christendom said:

The thing about the clan based system is it needs to be one or the other.  Right now we still have nations and national ports, but PBs are locked out unless you are with or on that particular clan's ally list....making PBs and the like a clique system.  As you've seen in the US nation it's a bit chaotic with various clans disliking others.  Now multiply that and you've got GB nation.  We currently have a mix of clan based and nation based system and it just isn't running well enough.

To keep in the theme of tittybaby's post here, I would recommend either switching entirely to a clan based system and having only a handful of nations be a race backdrop OR drop the clan owned / BR PB system and focus back on the nation port system.  Less nations would also be ideal.

It has been a while since someone mentioned my titties.. Thought you'd forgotten them by now.. Voloptous they may be..

[Sir Texas Sir]

11 hours ago, EliteDelta said:

Reffering to your point on BR PB's, I think if we went back to the old system, you wouldn't see nearly as many battles happening. I can guarantee that Prussian ports would eventually vanish, because we wouldn't be able to fill 25 player PB's consistently. Right now we fight probably 2-5 Port battles a week, that's a lot of lost content, and that's not even looking at other nations. 

Also it wouldn't be a solution for us to simply join a large nation, as many of our guys would probably just stop playing. We've been in large nation like GB and Pirates before, and we don't enjoy it. 

 

I get both side but I think the BRs need to be looked at.  Way to many ports with really low BR that would b better to have a higher BR to let a Nation defend it instead of a small elite force or the same 8-10 guys every time.

i know a few folks that stop playing cause there are no more big epic 1St rate port battles.

[King of Crowns]

15 hours ago, Lars Kjaer said:

This thread made me think about why I joined NA, why I played and why I left. And more importantly what I'd like NA to be again. I miss the days where there where 600-800 (sometimes even 1000 when there where multiple important PBs). I was online yesterday and there were 4 important PBs, the polish had an existential strugle in the central americas, the swedes had two ports in the lesser antilles (one of them a teak port) and there were a few minor engagements in the bahamas. Yet the player count didn't reach 500 at any port while I was on, at the top there were 490 players and three of those were me, myself and my alt. I simply will not accept so low numbers as the norm for a game I've come to love as much as I do.

Now what do I want from the game?

I want what the game was sold as: A hardcore, realistic naval warfare game.

Every single war in the history of this timeframe was decided by controlling the key access points at sea - meaning the control of commerce. The british won the war of 1756-1763 by controlling the channel and thereby the access of the americas. The british lost the american war of independence as they lost control of the access to the north american colonies (thx in a huge part to French regular troops forming a backbone for the american independence army and Comte de Grasse keeping his fleet in being as well as a decisive win at chesapeake bay). These two wars showed the french had superior privateers as they wreaked havoc on the british merchant marine, it wasn't however enough to decisively damage the british economy to the point where the british would be forced into a settlement in favour of France, instead the british managed to grind the french shipping to a halt decisively ruining the French ability to wage war (reduced the french treasury income to less than half of the prewar years). The french revolutionary wars continued the pattern, this time however the french had effectively cut the head off it's naval officers (literally speaking) but the grinding of french commerce to a halt was upset by french wins in Europe (the taking of the netherlands more than made up morst of the losses in the americas and India alone).

What does this mean to naval action and what would I like to see?

Player expectations:

This is a game where everyone gets everything from the first day or at least the first month. Players have come to expect that they should sail the largest ships for little to no effort. Why is that? - Well I'd wager that one important reason is that there is nothing to do if you can't sail the largest ships, you're not barred from some of the content - you're barred from the only content - RvR. This needs to change, both the playerexpectations and the lack of actual gameplay. Players need to accept that sailing a ship comes with the risk of losing it. They also need to accept that not everyone has to sail a 1st rate in order to be effective, sadly atm they do but that needs to change. Change the gamemechanics and you change the playerexpectations.

Nations:

Remove the cartoon nations. The playerbase isn't that large and having the historically correct nations in the carribean is what I would consider the maximum of nations, it is in terms of realism also the minimum imo. Poland-Lithuania never had a fleet (and arguably still doesn't in the NA) and so could be removed with no fuss, The prussians never had a fleet and should be removed, the Russian fleet never sailed the carribean and the russian empire never had colonies in the carribean - hence remove them all. The pirates are effectively a nation - remove their ports and allow them only to sail from freeports, do however give them the ability to hurt other nations economies by introducing raiding - a raided port ceases all production for a week for example, whilst the raided ports taxes from the past week is deducted from the owning clans warehouse (giving the owning clan a deficit if they haven't gotten enough gold) and given to the participants of the raid - I'm in favour of a collective sharing of the goods.. What would this mean for crafting in the pirate "nation"? - only from freeports and a dependancy on foreign tra(i)ders or alts to supply crafting materials.

RvR:

Well I like the fact that RvR immediately effects the opponents points of access. I dislike that it severely effects the opponents ability to wage war, atm the dutch for example has no access to Teak (disregarding alts). Imo all woods should be playerfarmed and the ability to make them should be everywhere - it shouldn't be the type of wood available to the opponent that decides the match before the battle has even begun. I dislike the imbalance of the upgrades, they should supplement a ship, not decidedly change the capabilities of a ship - hardcaps on module bonus' should/could offset the imbalance while still make some ports (like carta) attractive. The clans should be able to develop the economy in owned ports to the point where they consume european goods like the capitals. And split the servers once more - or make timers cheaper so that the defender can actually defend the ports. A solution to someone feeling left out? - wipe the map and everyone has a chance for a port again, this could be combined with removing the cartoon nations.

Economy:

Thx to reinforcementzones and capital zones there is atm no way to win or lose a war through financial warfare. If a small nation is being attacked by a larger it has no effective option but to lose its ports in a war of attrition. It cannot harm a larger one by harraguing the enemys traders to the point where the enemy is forced to come to terms. Trading effects RvR, crafting effects RvR, this should come as no surprise and smaller nations needs an effective way to counter enemy battlefleets. The magical reinforcement zones should be removed, both to honour the deal struck between the developers and the players (hardcore - REALISTIC = NO MAGIC), but also because the game otherwise will see fewer and fewer players due to the same semi-large clans/nations basically stomping on everyone else in search of content, effectively removing content in the long run. The economy needs to be balanced. My suggestion is to make carribean ports consume only european goods, goods that needs to be ordered from Europe and can be intercepted by enemy players effectively cutting off the goods from the port. The goods should go to the capital of the nation and from there be sold and redistributed to ports in the nation. Ports economical development should be decided by the application of EU goods and the maintenance of EU goods. The amount of goods should be dependant on the nations playerbase - the larger the base, the more goods with a fixed amount being distributed to the clans that own ports - the more ports owned by the clan, the more goods in order to prevent alts from buying up everything and thereby ruining the enemies chance to develop their nations ports. Every time a port is taken its economic development status should be reset making raiding of enemy ports and effective way to hurt enemy nations economic wellbeing. The owning clans would make their gold from taxes, developing the economies of their ports and from selling the allotted EU goods. In essence a prudent clan should be able to run about even with expenses and income in a balance - provided they support some of their ports financially and use other ports as product ports. The carribean should be able to produce export goods that should be delivered to the capital and twice a week the export goods should be sailed in treasure convoys to the edge of the map (8 or so random exit points for each nation so as to make interception harder). The departure time should be announced for the entire server making interception possible for the fast and crafty raider, and the amount of EU goods sent the other way should be decided by the amount of export goods making it to the exit point.

Crafting:

Remove the RNG from crafting and make the ships more expensive in terms of labour costs. Remove the 5/5 ships and instead reintroduce the refits. Except this time the refits becomes something you can unlock by building experience in the same ship/class and/or with VM/PvPm/CM. I would prefer a combination, experience makes the shipcrafter able to purchase the refit option, but the crafter would need to build up PvP marks/Victory marks in order to buy the refit. I would also suggest that the crafter only gets experience in the ship he's crafting and not the class as a whole. This would allow a crafter to specialize and the ships value would be determined by the refit, as well as a percentile increase to hp stats due to the crafters lvl of experience (thereby adding value to ships crafted by crafters not yet able to add a refit). The hp stat increase shouldn't be large with a max of fx. 5% (may be too much, but this number could be changed).

Risk versus Reward:

Atm there is little to no risk, and hence no rewards. In every game I have ever played there was a tangible reward and a calculated risk. This is not the case in naval action, which means that once people have grinded the levels, made their first couple of twenty millions and sailed every ship in the game there is little else to do and so they quit the game. Taking your four indiamans on your four alts should be a calculated risk where you can lose everything you own. Why? - because atm players are paying millions for upgrades that in reality has no value since we can all make millions from simply sailing a quick trading run. When nothing comes with a risk, then nothing matters. Make Naval Action matter again.

 

This is just my thoughts, some of them needs to be elaborated (especially the econ side), but I truly believe that the game atm is dormant and unless something drastically happens the game will simply never be what was promised from the start and from the potential the game has. So this is a call. A call to the devs to actually do something more than makeshift adjustments, a call for the players to give the game a serious thought as to how we can make it a success and a call to the community as a whole to come up with solutions. 490 players on a night where one nation were facing literal extinction, another had an important teak portbattle and a third having a shallow PB is simply not enough taking this games potential into consideration.

 

EDIT: I forgot crafting which has been added.

NAH. stop being a tity baby.  crafting is find. people left because the game is getting old and 100s of other reasons. such as a server split. 

[SirAlatriste]

You always forget the Spanish help in the USA's independence, but that's all right. Russia is the only of the "cartoon" nations that can be in the game, because it had a great potential in terms of navies (not in the Caribbean but no problem). Poland for me is a 100% removeable nation and I would add Portuguese nation.

Your economy suggestions are interesant, we need that. At least we know the devs always hear us, so just we have to wait.

The forthcoming patches will improve the game, so let's be positives.

[HachiRoku]

Back in the day we had about 3000 players online including PVP2 and 3. Playerbase dropping from 3000 to 500 in 3 years is actually a very stable playerbase. There are exceptions to this rule but if naval action was released tomorrow with 3000 people playing again the playerbase would be half a few weeks later. That's how games work unfortunately. If the devs managed to keep this game at 1000 players average for 4-5 years after releasing I would be really happy. One of the most important things is day one server stability. If there are issues game will loose alot. 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, King of Crowns said:

NAH. stop being a tity baby.  crafting is find. people left because the game is getting old and 100s of other reasons. such as a server split. 

Fine is spelled with an E..

[King of Crowns]

48 minutes ago, Lars Kjaer said:

Fine is spelled with an E..

But it was still good enough for u to understand what I was saying. So the the question becomes is that e necessary? Obviously not. 

[Christendom]

11 hours ago, Lars Kjaer said:

It has been a while since someone mentioned my titties.. Thought you'd forgotten them by now.. Voloptous they may be..

Your nickname was KoC’s greatest contribution to NA