Pirate Patch and Content

[Slim McSauce]

If they are a nation you should increase the character limit per server to 2. I like the outlaw lifestyle but I don't want to have to delete my character and lose all my stuff to do so.

The way I'd want pirates to be handled is as a status of reputation. You do bad things you lose reputation until you're put on exile and forced to sail under an outlaw flag for a time being or until you redeem yourself through action. Of course this can go on par with a pirate nation, but this is more what comes to mind when I think of pirates than an actual conglomerate of people flying under the pirate flag held under arbitrary rules because they chose that faction.

[Bluetooth]

41 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

Pirates without RvR will be handicapped nation. No hideouts, no shelters, no raids or port blockades. No bounties. If you implement things that I mention, we can remove RvR from pirates

About SOLs, once again you ignored my part about SOL maintenance and high cost. Have fun being a pirate when EVERYONE sails in 1st rates around like right now.

You can't fix A without fixing B because by fixing one problem we will get 2 new problems.

No.

You don't seem to get free pirates at all. 

We don't WANT a pirate nation.

You might. We don't.

Raids, bounties, port blockades etc ate not effected.

No SOL. That's not pirate. And be sure we do well in our small ships vs 1st rates. 😉

41 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

Use some logic and common sense. 

Two points on this.

1. Your a big RVR, Big clan player. Your view of logic and common sense is biased towards 'nation's and to be fair toward this end, your aims in the game are commendable.

2. I however, am a dirty, low life, pirate, ganker. Recently converted to Islam so I can sail my xebec selling carpets and slippers to all I come across.

I have no common sense or logic.

So please don't confuse me with someone who does. I sail where I want. I attack who I want. I help who I want. I have no allegiance to anyone other than clan mates and some of them I don't like.😘

But I have rum. Lots of rum. And some nice carpets....

Edited September 11, 2018 by Crow

[Bluetooth]

Duplicate #mistake.

Edited September 11, 2018 by Crow

[Norfolk nChance]

@Capn Rocko

Give us a little story... background.... I like the idea

 

Norfolk

 

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

Crow, I am interested. How much cost a persian rug depicting beheaded Swedes? Do I get free slippers when I order two carpets?

[Bluetooth]

1 minute ago, Cetric de Cornusiac said:

Crow, I am interested. How much cost a persian rug depicting beheaded Swedes? Do I get free slippers when I order two carpets?

@Cetric de Cornusiac A very popular choice Efendi.

You can have a very comfy slipper with every purchase. Buy one! Get one free!.

Buy two carpets and get one for each foot!

Did I mention the belly dancers......😉

[ZuLu oNe5432]

3 hours ago, admin said:

UI 
Localization
More PVE alternatives

Are the current priorities. We are almost done with the port UI and some new pve options will come with the UI patch

any date now for the patch?

[Tiedemann]

Yes to all! Love it, but mostly because I really dislike that Pirate nation = all the other nations. A bonus might be that pirate RvR players would have to join a real nation to do RvR and the pirates would be come a real hunting nation! Awesome, but new players needs to be warned away from joining the "Disney pirate nation" if it goes full on hard core with outlaw battles!  

But if you actually want to limit the ships pirates can sail and exclude them from using ships of the line, then the max crew for the pirate ranks need to be reduced or the top ranks removed. Because if they can still crew then, their alts in normal nation would still make the ships and trade them to pirates. And for this to be done they need to get some serious other advantage, speed and boarding bonus might do the trick yes!     

[Percival Merewether]

1 hour ago, Banished Privateer said:

Pirates were masters of hit and run tactics, masters of boarding and on top of that masters of trimming ships for maximum speed, guns loadout (putting gun in every possible hole, swivels everywhere, chasers) and high crew. 

Some privateers were of the greatest navy sailors and they tend to hop between being a pirate and privateer or by some they used to be considered simply pirates. We know all the great names, no need to mention them here.

That's true, we know names of many great pirates - but on avarage pirates were horribly outmatched by their naval counterparts. We also know names of many great naval captains, no need to mention them here though.

Putting a gun in every hole did make me laugh a bit though 

[Tiedemann]

2 hours ago, Lovec1990 said:

Look if we give the player a choice he would steal all refits and books witch would be too brutal

What? Where did you get that from?

2 hours ago, Angus MacDuff said:

I don't think you can have it both ways on this point.  Either they can raid/loot and take what they want or they cant raid.  Its unreasonable to have a raiding function, but you are limited in what you can take.

What? 😕

8 hours ago, Capn Rocko said:

An Idea i think that would be cool:

Turn the island of Mortimer Town into ai-controlled ports (similar to free towns) that produce the most lucrative trade goods (NOT crafting resources) in the game that only sell for good profit at nation capitals. These ports would only allow trade ships inside and could not be controlled by any clan or nation. This would let the entire player population bid against each other for the best trade goods. On top of this, these ports could be subject to clan-based raids (either pve or pvp) where the clan with the most hostility points at the end of the day receives a reward chest (or something similar) in their warehouse during maintenance.

I read AI owner of ports and that they would drop trading goods. For me this = easy $$$ and the risk is just doing boring PvE. But raiders need to sail away, and with valuable loot they will be slow! So maybe other players can intercept them on the way to safe harbor!?

 

Edited September 11, 2018 by Tiedemann

[o Barão]

This or similar ideas was already suggested many times. 

 

From my point of view pirates faction should had this factors/special abilities:

- Max crew 450  ( with upgrades, skills , etc they should be allowed to sail 4th rates )

- crew costs x3 

- They can capture ports , however because they are limited to 450 crew they should expected to capture only shallow waters ports. 

- Pirates clans can attack other pirates ports

- Can hire AI pirate ships to fleets ( the more powerful the ship more expensive it is )

- Pirates players can be hired as mercenaires to join port battles for other nations.

- Pirates should have acess to hideouts that only pirates can see and enter. 

- Pirates can raid ports ( if the port is raided the shop in that port will be closed for 24 hours for all players )

- Pirates can choose other nation flag to use for the next 24 hours however if they get to close to an enemy ship their flag will turn pirate and the player will need to wait the 24 hours to expire to have the option to choose another flag.  This is needed to trade with others nation ports ( no ship with a pirate flag should have acess to a faction port )

[Capn Rocko]

2 hours ago, Crow said:

No SOL. That's not pirate.

I personally do not have a problem with pirates sailing SoLs. I very much like the idea of pirate clans serving the role of mercenaries that can be hired to do other nation's dirty work. With this, comes the need for big ships. Many do not like pirates sailing large ships so I included it in the suggestion, but suggested it in a way that it could still be an option.

 

1 hour ago, Tiedemann said:

I read AI owner of ports and that they would drop trading goods. For me this = easy $$$ and the risk is just doing boring PvE. But raiders need to sail away, and with valuable loot they will be slow! So maybe other players can intercept them on the way to safe harbor!?

The idea was: if you want profitable trade goods = go to the center of the map in a highly populated area and make it back to your capital alive

[Guest]

I dont care about any pirate changes except ONE critical change.

Bring back Pirate vs Pirate. I want my clan to be hostile with the entire game if you let me kill fellow pirates.

[Tiedemann]

1 hour ago, Capn Rocko said:

The idea was: if you want profitable trade goods = go to the center of the map in a highly populated area and make it back to your capital alive

"The other guys" where scaring me with "raiding of player own ports scenarios". So I only quoted you in the hope that they would read it again. Because I see no mention of this, but my English is not so good so I misunderstand stuff often
This is a pirate feature so pirate player should raise their opinions and be heard on this imo. But if you scoundrels have your sights on my captains chest and favorite ships with your suggestions, then prepare for some forum PvP!

[Nick the cursed]

3 hours ago, Banished Privateer said:

You know what's hilarious here? You are member of XXXXX, a pirate clan that claims the highest place on Conquest Leaderboard, 20+ titles on ports and you guys keep capturing more and more ports, you do a lot of trading and PvE in Nuevitas, so who's biased on this topic or being a hypocrite? No offence, just pointing out facts as you tried to make me and my opinion look biased.

BLACK, not XXXXX...

[Nick the cursed]

15 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

If I recall correctly, Crow used to sail with XXXXX unless that has changed.

Nope, BLACK since long time

[Bluetooth]

13 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

OK, I was thinking he's Stormcrow from XXXXX. Nonetheless, I remember BLACK trying to create their Bahamas heaven and taking part in port battles, so you guys should be considered RvR players? Call me ganker or sealclubber, but I'm not RvR player. 

Thank you @Nick the cursed 

Its all cool. Only ever been Black. Never been in any other clan.

I did used to have a different name before I converted to Islam though. 😜

That's true, Black briefly took some ports in the bahamas, some members felt it was a good idea. (I did not).

So we took some shallow ports and hunted in the shallows. 

It did not sit well with most of the clan and was quickly abandoned. (I was very happy).

4 hours ago, Banished Privateer said:

Yes, against noobs and lonely SOLs. Hit a fleet of 6+ SOLs in 6th rates and share a screenshot with me or try me, my Bellona/Santi vs your 4-5 shallow boats and we shall see how well you're doing.

Why on earth would we attack 6 SOL? We are pirates not nationals. 

You like Bellona's and Santi's and that's fine but they are not pirate ships in my eyes or in reality. They belong with the nations and Pirates should not be a nation imo.

[Bluetooth]

I agree that this is a problem.

SOL everywhere and probably to common and your suggestion of high maintenance costs may help.

But some players will always want the biggest ships regardless I guess.

Maybe epic events for all rates and better content will help.

 

 

[Capn Rocko]

12 hours ago, Norfolk nChance said:

@Capn Rocko

Give us a little story... background.... I like the idea

 

Norfolk

 

I am not much of a story teller (you have Pagan Pete for that 😀), but some background on the matter:

I have seen what the pirate nation can be during the outlaw period and it was glorious. Letting the players police their own nation forced Patu and the other carebears out of the nation, it pushed the smaller clans into the Bahamas and other parts of the map to make new homes, and it resulted in a nation of hunters and savages. Some worked together and some put up a fight. You never knew what would happen when you ran into another pirate on the OW. It was hardcore and the players who survived loved it. The minute outlaw battles were removed, the carebears came back to Pirates, many vets left the game, and the remaining players changed nations. A sad ending imo. 

I am here to raise awareness and facilitate a discussion. I don't claim to have a perfect plan and I know some of the things mentioned in my OP will never be agreed upon. My point being that many of us think the pirate nation can be something much cooler/different/realistic/historical/hardcore (take your pick) than it has been for the last 3 years and we have already had a glimpse of what pirate life could truely be. Although it's not a development priority, let's continue to remind the developers that this is something we want even if we can't agree on every little detail. 

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Capn Rocko said:

I am not much of a story teller (you have Pagan Pete for that 😀), but some background on the matter:

I have seen what the pirate nation can be during the outlaw period and it was glorious. Letting the players police their own nation forced Patu and the other carebears out of the nation, it pushed the smaller clans into the Bahamas and other parts of the map to make new homes, and it resulted in a nation of hunters and savages. Some worked together and some put up a fight. You never knew what would happen when you ran into another pirate on the OW. It was hardcore and the players who survived loved it. The minute outlaw battles were removed, the carebears came back to Pirates, many vets left the game, and the remaining players changed nations. A sad ending imo. 

I am here to raise awareness and facilitate a discussion. I don't claim to have a perfect plan and I know some of the things mentioned in my OP will never be agreed upon. My point being that many of us think the pirate nation can be something much cooler/different/realistic/historical/hardcore (take your pick) than it has been for the last 3 years and we have already had a glimpse of what pirate life could truely be. Although it's not a development priority, let's continue to remind the developers that this is something we want even if we can't agree on every little detail. 

I don't think we should confuse the core wish by asking for all the other minor things like disbanding pirates as a 'nation' and making it something else. I think we should all 100% focus on chanting that we want outlaw battles back in some form and anything else is a much later goal.

[Christendom]

Outlaw battles + Unique perks

[Capn Rocko]

1 minute ago, Christendom said:

Outlaw battles + Unique perks

another suggestion could be outlaw battles + RvR + total clan control of ports. Many want clan vs clan instead of nation vs nation. Outlaw pirates could be be that. 

[StaleMemes]

36 minutes ago, Capn Rocko said:

another suggestion could be outlaw battles + RvR + total clan control of ports. Many want clan vs clan instead of nation vs nation. Outlaw pirates could be be that. 

I made a thread about exactly that a while ago ironically, it got derailed really fast though but i'll repost the section on pirates. May not be 100% cohesive because I got bogged down trying to edit it, but the gist of it is clear. The permadeath for pirates is extreme and would not be necessary for much of the rest of the system to work.

Original Thread: 

Just open all the spoilers and read, I never learned how to do spoilers in spoilers properly.

On 3/30/2018 at 10:15 AM, Capt Aerobane said:

Totally rework pirates and add privateers.

What I, a largely solo player, would be most excited about!

Pirates as is are just another nation… one of 11? 10? A lot. Anyway, they are nothing unique. This at the same time as there are two problems: Lack of gameplay niches for solo players and complete lack of representation of actual pirates: outlaws and privateers which were important at that time. So important that controlling them was a key reason for the construction of the US navy’s six original frigates including the famous USS constitution. In fact, the charter to build these frigates included a clause immedidately scrapping the ships’ construction should the threat of piracy be eliminated through a peace treaty with the barbary states. (If Wikipedia is to be believed)

Here is how pirates could work.

  Hide contents

Pirates would be total outlaws, while privateers would be nationally affiliated outlaws.

First pirates. Pirates would be an extremely challenging gameplay style, and not just because of pvp. Pirate gameplay would, as is accurate, be more about survival for most players than about having an impact on the OW. As a result, pirate mechanics would be very different. Pirates would have no ports, and no alliances being able to attack each other at will if they wanted. However, some clans may decide allow pirates into their port and there is nothing stopping a group of pirates working together, which would be their best chance of taking down a large merchant. While this would decrease the prosperity for obvious reasons, the clan would earn income from repairing pirate ships and selling them goods, and most importantly by facilitating pirate hiring of crew. Pirates would have hideouts and staches. A hideout would allow pirates to repair their ship and the only continuity for a pirate after dying would be what they had laid a way in staches. After a pirate dies they start from scratch with a basic ship, crew, and cannons + some repair equipment. Any pirate can make a hideout, and they can make it anywhere. (but they would want to put it somewhere well hidden. Hideouts would be hidden from everyone but their owner pirate in the OW, and staches would be completely hidden from everyone in the OW. To enter a hideout or interact with a stache a pirate would sail close to it in the OW and right click on where they knew it was, there would be a 2 min cooldown, if they clicked on the right spot they would be able to interact with it (with their ship still in the OW) and repair, refit/add guns, replenish or upgrade crew, or whatever. If a pirate forgot where they put their stache? Tough luck man. If someone else finds it? Should have been better hidden. Same for hideouts. While the pirate is in the instance interacting with the hideout, a they would still be in the open world so anyone sailing by could see them, see the name of the pirate inside, and attack him then destroy the hideout or looting the stache, or if they are clever they could memorize its location and come back later to snatch it up. Remember, pirates are for hard mode, survival-oriented players.

Pirate levelling

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Pirate levelling would be based on infamy, but there wouldn’t be much levelling. Pirate power would be very fluid. Pirates would have the option of refitting merchant vessels they capture to add more guns. This would mean turning LGVs into LGV refits, (not likely to happen often because deep water vessels would be tough to hide) traders brigs into brigs, etc. Also letting them add tons and tons of small caliber guns would be good, but probably difficult coding wise? Letting a pirate bold enough to do so cram an obscene amount of 2, 4, and 6 pound cannons onto a captured Indiaman and go full Blackbeard for a few glorious days before being hunted down would be awesome. Pirate crew would have bonuses and penalties fitting their historic counterparts and giving them advantages against merchant shipping, for instance letting them cram more crew onto ships without morale penalties, or penalties manning 12lb or larger cannons. The real “levelling” of pirates would be trying to sink/capture enough merchant shipping to get to the top of the infamy leaderboards and start getting clans to put bounties on their head.

 Pirate repairs

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Pirate repairs could work as following: Pirates can either repair in ports that allow pirates, in hideouts, or in the OW/battle. To get OW repairs, pirates would have to cannibalize ships they captured for materials, destroying them. (pirates could either sink, swap ship, or scrap ships they capture, giving infamy, a new ship, or repairs respectively.) Pirates could also recover any lost crew after a battle to complete their complement by forcing sailors who surrendered from their victim to join their crew.

False flags and smuggling.

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Pirates could use false flags. A pirate would select a nation, clan, origin, destination, and ship (destination/origin explained above) (obv would want to be realistic there, a pirate on a snow claiming to be an Indiaman wouldn’t fool anyone with a spyglass) they would then, when hailed in the OW, show up as this. They could use this to hide from hunters and surprise merchants, or sneak into ports and even buy off the market place. However, if they show up to a port and request entry claiming to be a clan, nation, or player that isn’t whitelisted to enter the port, the port owners would be immediately notified of an attempted smuggler, forcing the pirate to flee. Ports adamant about preventing smuggling and protecting their monopolies could set up stringent entry requirements: Only entry by PMing the entry officer and getting a temporary whitelist. While a pirate could claim to be someone in the OW, they can’t fake a private message. It would also make alts basically useless unless they were able to completely infiltrate a clan, and even then logs and basic clan accounting would catch them. Instead of no-skill boring alts, we would have pirate smugglers that can be countered and require skill/risk.

Secondly, if a ship came very close to them and hailed them again they would have to show their true colors. AI sail in straight lines too, so pretending to be something other than a pirate would be tough: but awesome if pulled off. An interesting strat to counter the fact that OW AI are slower than players would be to carry a large amount of one heavy item in the hold, slowing the pirate down to AI speeds and destroying this weight when they want to show their true colors and attack giving them normal speed.

Privateers.

  Hide contents

There would be two paths to becoming a privateer: Either start your character as a national and don’t pick a clan, instead choosing to become a privateer and receive a letter of marque from your nation, OR, as a pirate secure a letter of marque from a nation. For a pirate to do this, they would have to garner significant infamy and not have sank any vessels of the nation they want a letter of marque from in the past X amount of days. Upon doing so they would lose their perma death status and take on many aspects of a national. The pirate route would have several advantages: A pirate could secure marques from multiple nations, and change nations by dropping/taking letters. They could also revert to piracy if they wanted to but doing so and returning to perma death would be very risky.

Privateers could help clans by working as mercenaries. They could protect shipping, attack enemy shipping, hunt pirates, and even help with port battles and large PVP battles. In exchange, they would be able to buy/repair ships from the national capital or clans who whitelist them. They would have to form relationships with at one clan or port to get access to repairs and ships near the combat areas, but clans would benefit from allowing privateers and they could still safely prevent them from abusing the market by only granting them ship, repair, and resupply amenities.

Edited September 12, 2018 by Capt Aerobane

[Capn Rocko]

23 minutes ago, Capt Aerobane said:

I made a thread about exactly that a while ago ironically, it got derailed really fast though but i'll repost the section on pirates. May not be 100% cohesive because I got bogged down trying to edit it, but the gist of it is clear. The permadeath for pirates is extreme and would not be necessary for much of the rest of the system to work.

Thanks for the re post. I like how you suggested the outlaw playstyle as a sort of "survival" mode. The developers gave us Prussia/Russia/Poland for hardcore players by stating that it is hard because there are no safe zones. Well, the problem is that the hardcore players don't need safe zones to begin with. Outlaw battles is the hardcore/survival mode that players really want.

As you said, I think the permadeath is probably too extreme but I like the idea of a bounty system. However, I cant think of a way to implement a bounty system without it being farmable by the player. UWO had a decent notoriety system that wasn't farmed, but thats because players bounties were worth pennies so it wasn't worth it to the bounty hunters to hunt or the player to alt farm, it basically just served as a pirate leaderboard. 

Lastly, I really want to like the idea of hideouts. It has been suggested many times before, but the only thing that keeps me from 100% supporting it is the fact that a majority of the ports in the game are unused atm. It sounds really cool but adding more ports kinda seems like a waste of the developer's time at this point. 

 

[Latron]

I would agree that pirates need a change, but no bonuses to things like speed or boarding, that would just be unfair, and no outlaw battles. It was added and removed several times for the exact same reason. Unless it is somehow activated through very specific means that won't allow it to be abused, then that's a no from me.