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Open World should- have multiple instances using real years to keep older ships viable


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Easiest way to put it is that each server would have a timer ticking that maybe moved a year for every real life 24hrs, once the instance hits 1820 it starts again at say 1620. So say I see three open world instances in the main menu. The game also shows me what year they are up to. My list of owned ships also shows me what year they were launched. These two things tell me what ships I can choose to take in what instances.

If I want to take a a Constitution I have to choose a server that is playing after the launch date. But this also excludes some of my really really old ships from being taken into that timeline. But most ships will be available in the later timelines. Only things such as Galleons that would never ever be seen near 1820 would be excluded.

By the same token anything launched later can only be played after that date.

 

Thus not preventing the old warhorses from shining like they should in their time.

The oldest ships would also have a date telling you when they were absolutely stopped and their final disappearance from the timeline.

 

This in turn means that it would be fun having to keep ships from different periods. A lot of ships however would be available for most of the period only becoming redundant and unavailable to play in in the first 50 yrs or last 50yrs of a timeline that say ran from 1620 to 1820.

 

You think. It's almost 1817 I will be able to get my Trincomalee soon.

 

If you really wanted to you could play in one instance from start to finish or keep choosing a later or earlier instance. 

More gold and fancy stuff in the 1620s to early 1700s, more combat advances and flush decks in the 1730-1820 period.

You would never have super heavy frigates until late in the timeline. Meaning that galleons would be safe at least in the first 20yrs or so of the timeline. And smaller frigates would be heroes at some point during the timeline as well.

 

By the same token as the year for a ship you want comes up in the server instance only then can you buy and outfit it in that instance.... well I don't mind either way. But I do know you will be looking forward to that launch day.

 

Obviously the older ships would have different customisation as well so the variation would continue with that during the timeline.

Another advantage would be forcing people not to choose the best of the best or at least with a timeline their will be multiple "bests" at different times and so you won't get that "one" ship that everybody uses. They will be forced to change or change server instances for a different timeline. Perhaps missing out on some achievement - staying in instance for whole timeline - or some other longevity rewards.

 

This is one of the ways I can see the devs keeping the older ships viable and the game varied.

 

P.S. I would also see this implemented for the 24hr operations and the deathmatch style games.

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Nooooooooooo

Make old ships way easier to obtain vs newer ships with as many cannons.

auctions, beached treasure ships, quest rewards etc.

Say I rank up to major elite captain nebsif, I get to choose between a brig and a 1600 ship with 3x more guns, like medium and heavy tonks.

Tired of repeating it btw...

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But that means we will have completely helpless ships roaming around at the mercy of the elite who play 24/7?

Remember these older ships may have the same number of cannon but have far smaller cannon. That is if we were to take the beginning of the time period back 100 yrs or so. which is what a lot of people want so they can have their old spanish galleons and such. Otherwise we will not see them. They will simply be annihalated.

 

nebsif so you want to be able to choose an old redundant ship that would not be in service or stand a chance against modern gear half its size instead of a modern brig? Wait don't repeat it again ;)

You may be complaining when you find it gets pasted by virtually everything. Nobody will play this way.

 

I get it btw. I just think it would look silly unless you are talking about the current game period of 1700 or so to 1820 or so. 

You're not talking about a 1600 galleon like I am are you?

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But that means we will have completely helpless ships roaming around at the mercy of the elite who play 24/7?

Remember these older ships may have the same number of cannon but have far smaller cannon. That is if we were to take the beginning of the time period back 100 yrs or so. which is what a lot of people want so they can have their old spanish galleons and such. Otherwise we will not see them. They will simply be annihalated.

 

nebsif so you want to be able to choose an old redundant ship that would not be in service or stand a chance against modern gear half its size instead of a modern brig? Wait don't repeat it again ;)

You may be complaining when you find it gets pasted by virtually everything. Nobody will play this way.

 

I get it btw. I just think it would look silly unless you are talking about the current game period of 1700 or so to 1820 or so. 

You're not talking about a 1600 galleon like I am are you?

 

I am talkin about mid 1600 w/e, and what prevents you from installing bigger guns? Say English navy is retiring a ship, selling it on some sort of auction (like it was irl), you buy it and pimp it out. Galleons can be used as super cheap trade ships too btw

UnicornPortBeam.jpg

 

Our current progression is super linear and pretty much brain dead "ohhh but trinc is 1-2 knots faster than consti which has 5x more punch and MBT armor" much choice, such wow. Choices like in my previous post could spice it up.

 

Last thing, aint any ship below Trinc completely helpess against the Trinc? It can catch any of them and do nasty things with them.. 24/7 no-lifer's will always have an advantage.

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Hi Destraex,

You made an excellent post

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/3353-when-does-a-game-in-development-lose-its-way/#entry67002

While reading it, there were notes on balance. And this thread attempts to address that. The server solution is somewhat akin to utilizing a Tier based system used in games like WoT and War Thunder. Granted, those games being instance based versus server based.

My concern is that one server or time period out weighs the others (eg, the period the Constitution is in). This is one area where, as your other post hinted, concessions may be required. Some balance is needed in the ship department otherwise, why sail anything older than ~1790?

From the 2015 ship poll:

1600-1830 hard limit

1690-1790 preferred

If the development team started with this time period, they must have a plan for addressing the different time periods (eg, how they would address balance).

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One unique server ! Dividing a small community into several smaller communities is not the best way to solve the ships period issue.

Morever, it seems the open world will be quite large and therefore will need a lot of players to make it alive.

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One unique server ! Dividing a small community into several smaller communities is not the best way to solve the ships period issue.

Morever, it seems the open world will be quite large and therefore will need a lot of players to make it alive.

This. Unlike most games NA is compared to, WT, WoT, EvE, even, we do not, and likely wont have, the same player base in numbers. This is a niche game, at best. Niche games generally have a small but highly devoted playerbase.

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I am talkin about mid 1600 w/e, and what prevents you from installing bigger guns? Say English navy is retiring a ship, selling it on some sort of auction (like it was irl), you buy it and pimp it out. Galleons can be used as super cheap trade ships too btw

UnicornPortBeam.jpg

 

Our current progression is super linear and pretty much brain dead "ohhh but trinc is 1-2 knots faster than consti which has 5x more punch and MBT armor" much choice, such wow. Choices like in my previous post could spice it up.

 

Last thing, aint any ship below Trinc completely helpess against the Trinc? It can catch any of them and do nasty things with them.. 24/7 no-lifer's will always have an advantage.

generally older ships are not designed for heavier guns. They would simply break the deck if not right away, shortly after any storm or practice firing. I also had no idea that the royal navy sold warships to civilians when they were retired.

The ships do what the ships do. The alternative is ignorance combined with fairies and unicorns.

The whole point of what I propose is to keep the trinc in it's timeline which is pretty much 1820 near the very end iirc.

I,m sorry but I never want to see an old galleon with 6pdr guns beating a Bellona with 68pdr carronades unless it is by player skill or circumstance o the battle like reefs.

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Let's be frank here. You don't want to magifantastically improve anything, you're pushing your realism for all costs agenda here. It's pretty clear, mate. Seriously.

 

You could just say "I want historical accuracy above everything else" instead of going with that missed "now we won't have best ships in one instance, we will only have best ships in each instance!". Yeaaaah....

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As Captain J. Aubrey said in the fine movie Master and Commander, after Dr Maturin called the Surprise an "aged man of war" compared to the Acheron (Constitution) "She has a bluff bow, lovely lines. She's a fine sea-boat: weatherly, stiff and fast … very fast, if she's well handled. No, she's not old; she's in her prime." An older ship can beat a new one with good seamanship.

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Let's be frank here. You don't want to magifantastically improve anything, you're pushing your realism for all costs agenda here. It's pretty clear, mate. Seriously.

Call for an F-18 in War Thunder or Cliffs of Dover and try to talk about 'realism at all costs.'

What's really going on is that only a small minority actually know anything about the era. That allows the majority to cram 'F-22 Raptor-shoots-missile-at-the-Red-Baron' situations down our throats. Because most people can't see how silly it is.

 

 

An older ship can beat a new one with good seamanship.

You know you're citing a work of fiction as support, right? No 6th rate ever defeated a super frigate, and the mismatch was due to guns, tonnage and men, not age.

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Call for an F-18 in War Thunder or Cliffs of Dover and try to talk about 'realism at all costs.'

What's really going on is that only a small minority actually know anything about the era. That allows the majority to cram 'F-22 Raptor-shoots-missile-at-the-Red-Baron' situations down our throats. Because most people can't see how silly it is.

 

You know you're citing a work of fiction as support, right? No 6th rate ever defeated a super frigate, and the mismatch was due to guns, tonnage and men, not age.

And the work of fiction cites a scenario where a smaller, unrated ship did, infact, beat a larger ship. HMS Sloop Speedy vs the frigate Gamo. now, I don't know the age of either ship at the time of battle, but what I am getting at is just because something is older, does not mean she is automatically inferior.

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might i enquire as to your reasons?

 

Because this is supposed to be open world #1. Your idea completely destroys that. #2 Open World isn't supposed to be "fair" or "balanced", but that's what makes it fun. IF the devs do it right, you'll still have more than enough ways to get out of dodge if you get near an enemy ship. You have that telescope for a reason chief. If you see a large ship you can't take on ahead of you through your telescope and it's a possible threat, go around it, he can't catch up to you very easily, if at all depending on the circumstances.

 

You're treating this game like its supposed to be an Arena match or where every ship should be "balanced" ultimately making the game a bore fest since no ship will be ultimately different in terms of power, to be "balanced".

 

So no.. your idea would destroy the game, at least to the extent of what it's supposed to be. If you don't like open world where things aren't balanced and you need to use your wit and mind to overcome threats then this game isn't or shouldn't be for you.

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I like open world where things are as they should be. There were a lot of older ships in use that would not beat newer ships during the timeline we have for the game. We will also have newer ships that can be beaten by squadrons. What I don't want to see is ancient ships that should long have been extinct trying to beat newer ships that they do not havve a chance. Against.

One of the reasons is that I really like the look of the older ships with all of their decoration. I just won't be playing them but because it would be sad to see them never have their hey day and sad to see them whipped by those superfast modern heavy frigates. Basically i am for realism and that means i don't want to see an f22 vs the red baron. But still would live to play the red baron in its hey day.

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"Would you call me an aged man-o-war, Doctor? No, she isn't old... she's in her prime."

 

I think even the older vessels will have their place. Splitting the games population between different servers will not add anything to NA as a whole. There are however way of making older vessels useful. 

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Aubrey's older vessel is not a galleon from the 1600s.

 

Well if we do not want to split the population then lets start the servers at 1750 and when it hits 1820 and there are newer galleon models coming out it starts at 1600 to go right to 1820 eventually. Then we can all look forward to new ships and the devs can concentrate on the dates arriving every day to deliver new ships.

 

galleon2.jpg

 

VS

 

connyart1.jpg

 

I am afraid the galleon will be useless every time.

There is a reason the red baron is not flying around today.

It also looks ridiculous.

 

I don't want to see older vessels be marginally useful in some niche they find. I want to see them in their prime at the top of the food chain and this is possible with a timeline.

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