Show players names/ships in a battle before entering

[Arnaud Arpes]

Often times, I'll be sailing around and I'll come upon a battle that's one sided in against France. I'll join the battle to try and assist, but once I'm in the battle it's just AI French ships being attacked by a group of real players. The AI ships dont help me much, and I end up getting sunk, captured, or having to flee.

It would be great if there were some way to see the players names, ranks, ship class, etc similar to whats shown on the scoreboard when targeting a battle on the OW.

[maturin]

Definitely not. This is precisely the sort of time where fog of war and unpredictability should be the rule of the day. For many reasons, including excitement and prevention of ganking.

[Booyaah]

They need to bring the OW spyglass back to identify ships, as far as pvp, maybe they could color the swords red or something instead...

[Flavalicious]

Hell with that. Battle is a battle. Join and see whos in there

Im already of the opinion you shouldnt be able to tell a bot from a player in the OW (or at least until your right on top of em)

['Sharpe]

If you reveal who's who in the battle marker, you'll almost never get PvP unless one side is sure the numbers will be in their favor. Fog of war is necessary here to keep battles feeling fresh and not numerically calculated so that one side is always assured a win.

Also, it's a nice challenge to have to ascertain the battle situation from the marker. You have to know BR values for ships, think about player territory patterns, NPC routes, etc. It's another differentiator for those captains with experience versus those without, and those types of differentiators make a game's outcomes more variable (and hence more fun) over time.

Edited November 13, 2015 by 'Sharpe