ajffighter86

Yes, I really believe it. The point is that the issue is not the timers, it is the players. Summary of your post: 1) I do not want to be troubled with playing with other players, takes too much time, effort, blah blah blah. 2) I suddenly want to play with other players. 3) Game is working when things go my way. Game is broken when things do not. And what exactly is hypocritical? I have been the victim of many 'ganks' within sight of port. Join the club, bud! I doubt there is anyone in NA who hasn't had that experience at some point. I still maintain that it is better to have the system we have now than to punish players who are working together while giving training wheels to people who do not.

Because if it is 3 minutes, you will arrive at 3:01 and complain. if it is 4 minutes, you will arrive at 4:01 and complain. And if it is an hour, you will arrive at 1:00:01 and complain that the game just cut you off from joining. None of that matters if you sail together. In fact, if you sail close enough together, you don't even have to worry about timers because you all get dragged in to the fight together when it is initiated. But you do not want that. You want to be able to call for people outside of visible distance to come to your aid because you are lazy and do not want to be hassled with sailing with other people, until the crap hits the fan, and then suddenly the game mechanics are 'broken' and prevented you from helping each other which you apparently didn't want to do in the first place. Does. not. compute. 2 minutes is about the amount of time you can reach each other based on the sight-lines. Again, 'fight what you see.' Anything more than that becomes some magical GPS-guided SOS distress system that absolutely RUINS immersion.

I don't understand how anyone can have that much time in the game and yet still advocate for a system of longer timers that >>>> has already been tested and was determined not to work. <<<<< What was it Einstein was credited with saying? "Insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

Nope! The short timers also favor the guy who takes a lone Niagara out of Tumbado to hunt Spanish traders off Cuba, and does not feel like having every. single. chance. to capture a trader foiled by some guys 3 horizons away.

This. You can pretty much bet it will halt PVP in the Antilles due to the close proximity of the ports. I'm not going to sail over there with a few buddies just so that the people hiding in ports can get their jollies off on creating ambushes. Those guys can rot in the ports waiting for all I care, if that's how they want to spend their time logged onto the game. I have no desire to give a handicap to people who aren't playing as a group, so they can have an advantage or even an undeserved 'even' fight with people who are putting in the effort of actively working together. And dare I go so far as to say it: even if it *is* a gank squadron near a port, they are still working together and naturally should have an advantage over people who are NOT. +1 for 'Sail together, fight together.' To Aethlstan, I recall the days on PVP2 with the longer timers. Vieques had dozens of players taking turns popping in and out of the port trying to gauge the enemy's strength. The result was, as I recall it, VERY LITTLE PVP'ing, lots of port sniping/'peek-a-boo' and eventually everyone just got frustrated that neither side had the guts to commit to sail out of port in force, and the next thing you know, 'it's time for bed', 'gotta work tomorrow' and lots of 'I don't have time for this ***t' being declared on teamspeak. [Log off.] No fight today, maybe tomorrow. Please. Please do not bring those days back.

Here's a suggestion, and apologies because after editing, my post isn't so short-winded. Scrap the battle timer argument. Time is irrelevant when the overall problem is lack of players wanting anything to do with each other and no incentive to sail together, only to spam agonizing pleas for help when suddenly it wasn't such a great idea to be out on a trader alone. Instead: Have players be able to generate their own escort missions that PROMOTE sailing together. For example: I need to run a shipment of oak logs from Wilmington to St. Marys. I know it's pretty darn foolish to try to do this on my own with pirates/danes/swedes/French/clowns/hobos/IRS agents/everyone's cousin/beggars coming out of Sunbury to gank raid traders. I'll create a group. Join my group and it'll generate an escort mission, and you'll get a calculated number of XP points based on distance/risk and gold (which I, the trader, has to furnish out of my own pockets), to motivate players to accept this mission and sail along. Typically this line of work will attract newer players, and they don't have much to lose and it would require perhaps less effort for the rewards, provided we don't get attacked. And if we do get attacked, well, PVP for everyone. Maybe the game could be coded to throw in a chance for RNG rewards upon successful completion of the trip for all players involved. "Nice, I got Essex paint for helping z4ys move a shipment of gold coins." -- Something like that. The point is that you have to make the rewards interesting enough where players are motivated to work together. Too hard to implement? Maybe, but it makes more sense than sending an 18th century text-message in nation chat, with the coordinates of the battle, for everyone and their uncle to form a counter fleet that sails for (time compressed) days to join a battle that lasts 1.5 hours in real time, and let's be honest, there really isn't much incentive to help form a hunting party anyway. The most you'll get is a 'thank you' until the next time that trader goes out and gets himself into another jam. No one likes to sail out to sea only to chase an enemy gank fleet for an hour and have that enemy escape, and have nothing to show for it. If I had a dollar for every time the Danish or pirates led the Americans on a wild goose chase out of Sunbury, I could actually afford to buy a ship in Charleston. Something needs to be done to incentivize players to help each other *BEFORE* it gets to that point. No need to worry about battle timers because you'd already be sailing together as a group, and there's a chance you might get something really nice for your time. There's no reason we shouldn't see the trade-chat window EXPLODING with opportunities for players to help each other with trader runs, but we need a game mechanic that encourages it. Point is: I would LOVE to see missions that actually PROMOTE players sailing together, rather than typical 'go sail here and sink the robot' missions that aren't really worthy of a PVP server. The biggest issue with this suggestion is that you actually have to make these types of human-interaction missions more appealing (rewarding) than grinding admiralty orders. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great thread, we need more suggestions that actually promote human-human gameplay rather than human versus robots AKA 'EZ Money.' Nothing sadder than seeing people on a PVP server sitting in ports or hiding in missions grinding money and XP. The open world would feel much more 'alive' without so much of the PVE content which distracts players from interacting with other players, but again, the issue is that it simply isn't rewarding enough in comparison, to work closely with other players (HUMANS!) when it is far easier to take advantage of the PVE opportunities.

Good thread, I'll repost there.

Here's a suggestion. Scrap the battle timer argument. Time is irrelevant when the overall problem is lack of players wanting anything to do with each other and no incentive to sail together, only to spam agonizing pleas for help when suddenly it wasn't such a great idea to be out on a trader alone. Instead: Have players be able to generate their own escort missions that PROMOTE sailing together. For example: I need to run a shipment of oak logs from Wilmington to St. Marys. I know it's pretty darn foolish to try to do this on my own with pirates/danes/swedes/French/clowns/hobos/IRS agents/everyone's cousin/beggars coming out of Sunbury to gank raid traders. I'll create a group. Join my group and it'll generate an escort mission, and you'll get a calculated number of XP points based on distance/risk and gold (which I, the trader, has to furnish out of my own pockets), to motivate players to accept this mission and sail along. Typically this line of work will attract newer players, and they don't have much to lose and it would require perhaps less effort for the rewards, provided we don't get attacked. And if we do get attacked, well, PVP for everyone. Too hard to implement? Maybe, but it makes more sense than sending an 18th century text-message in nation chat, with the coordinates of the battle, for everyone and their uncle to form a counter fleet that sails for (time compressed) days to join a battle that lasts 1.5 hours in real time. Point is: I would LOVE to see missions that actually PROMOTE players sailing together, rather than typical 'go sail here and sink the robot' missions that aren't really worthy of a PVP server. The biggest issue with this suggestion is that you actually have to make these types of human-interaction missions more appealing (rewarding) than grinding admiralty orders.

November patch, then? We need a hardcore server and an arcade server. That's all there is to it. Two totally different playstyles for totally different players. I was drawn to this game because, relatively speaking, it is the most realistic age-of-sail game on the market right now. But, I'm gradually becoming weary of things creeping their way into the game, like quasi-supernatural perks and arbitrary boundaries where in one grid something is allowed, and in the next grid it is not. But that is all I will say further on the matter. I will give credit to you developers that this is indeed a new idea, and new ideas are at least better than rehashing old ones. I tend to forget that we are still testers and the game is not complete.

Yep, Venezuela is the new Haiti/S. Cuba for PVP. Just wish it weren't twice as far from Charleston, lol.

I play USA on PVP1 and the current mechanics are what allows us to have any influence on the game, whatsoever. You think the USA is gonna take all 30 of its players and just go rip-roaring across the Caribbean, snaffling up ports? No, best chance we have is commerce raiding (and occasionally getting in on a port battle with our allies.) It's simply not possible for a smaller nation to raid a larger enemy's coast when that enemy has 30 minutes to call their whole nation to arms. Not to mention the fact that with time-compression sailing, such a response should be an impossibility. Just yesterday I lost an ingermanland trying to sail around Jamaica to set up an outpost in allied British ports, to a fleet of about 6 French renomonomeees (sp?). Wasn't the wisest decision on my part to take it out on it's own, but it was a risk *I* myself took. In fact, I was attacked right outside montego bay, and if I'd started my journey about 1 minute earlier, I'd have made the journey safely into the port. And yet, despite that incredibly frustrating experience, I do not advocate that the mechanics be altered. Perhaps, one day, Americans will be raiding the French outside their ports and I don't want the opportunity to return the favor to be spoiled .

How are they going to learn what PVP is really like if we keep coddling them? There's already an option to have fleets, which is a travesty in itself. What next? Battle denial? Why not throw in some invincibility as well. There's not a person here who didn't have to go through the initial phases of the game where everything seemed impossible and hopeless. Is it too much to ask that we stop dumbing the game down before we end up with just another arcade shooter? Nevermind, world of warships it is.

Only secure due to the fact the Spanish do not want to fight us due to timers. That is about to change with the new conquest system. But for me, the threat of enemies on the doorstep is not the biggest issue. I'm more concerned about the thought process behind the proposal. New players have a hard time because they spend a lot of time putting around in safe zones and the moment they get into a real PVP fight, suddenly the game becomes too hard. I don't think you can solve the problem of spoiling people with safe zones . . . by adding more safe zones. -------------------------------------- My grandfather learned to swim when his daddy threw him into the St. Johns River and told him to be home in time for dinner. Welcome to PVP.

Yep. Let players learn the game in PVE environments. I have no problem with letting their craft/rank XP carry over to the Caribbean, because I don't want them to feel like their grinding time was wasted and they have to start all over if they want to try PVP, but I feel like the developer's approach is only gonna dumb things down in the PVP realm.

To much extent I agree with this. Pacific coast for starting is a great idea, not sure that we need 'rookie zones' in the PVP theatre. Green zones in capital waters is tolerable. However, I don't want to be sailing around and realize, 'oh, I can attack people here, wait, now I cannot, oh, now I can again'. Let's not turn the map into a checkerboard of safe/unsafe zones. New guys still have to grind (unfortunately), and Pac. coast allows them a 'safe' area to do that. It might also help if players need to 'cool down' and rebuild their fleets a bit, assuming that ships they've built there can be teleported to ports in the PVP area.

Today may have been somewhat of a turning point for the dutch. Out of all the flags launched, I don't think they suffered any port losses, and even gained a few back. As mentioned before, you have to know your limitations based on how many players you have. It gets easier to defend ports when you aren't stretched so thin, and thus it's very hard to actually 1-port a nation. Expand too far, and watch as ports get picked off one by one. Perhaps the dutch are at their 'comfortable' number of ports at the moment and won't have as much trouble defending here on out, or maybe I speak too soon, time will tell. Also, thanks to the French for letting us know you can trade flags with allies and plop ports on the other side of the map. That's not sarcasm, I hope It really shakes up the front lines a bit.

Granted these ships were at anchor and not a 'full complement', but Royal Charles was basically taken right out from under the English noses.

I don't even have an outpost in Charleston, the US capital. The outpost was destroyed so I could have that extra slot to branch out. To me, the issue is making the fun spread around the map. I do not think that will be accomplished by having the 3 closest ports to your capital be non-capturable, it will only motivate people to bunker down all the time, during good times and bad. In fact, I'd say a majority of the USA players recognize that Charleston is simply too out-of-the-way to be useful as a capital. Most shipbuilding operations are run out of free towns. My personal one being Cayman Brac. All of this should technically be confidential information but I only make it public so as to demonstrate why staying in the relative safety of your own capital is not always the best way to play the game. Take a smuggler into Charleston sometime and see the shop for yourself, we have no market. Everyone who is smart has left the capital. My advice to any new player on the USA side is always the same: "Sail south." But then I hear so much whining about "oh sailing takes too long". It's just a matter of time before their fully-loaded trader gets ganked by a pirate/dane fleet out of Sunbury, but if they choose not to heed advice, then personally I do not care whether or not they leave the game. Like I said, no motivation. During the Mexico campaign a few weeks ago, I was surprised to see players sailing in the gulf on the USA side that I'd never even crossed paths with before. Those are the people who will survive when (not if, because it will happen) the US faction gets 1-ported again. They probably haven't been to the capital since they created their character, and therefore they're not likely to suffer much, if at all, when the USA gets surrounded again.

I've been away for about a week, and I see Spanish ports near the Dutch capital and French ports in Cuba. With all due respect to the OP, these fears of reducing a nation to nothing are unfounded, or at least, overblown. The chance to break out of any stranglehold is very much possible in this game, but it does require some effort. I can only imagine with the new port battle system, it will only become easier to sail across the map and claim a port before any enemy can react, regardless of how strong or weak that faction is. I think it will make the game more interesting because 'front lines' will not be so static and clearly defined. The most difficult task lies in motivating 'carebears' to sail more than 10 minutes away from the capital waters, and I partially blame the mechanics for this. The ability to always have the default teleport be to the capital, not to mention being given your first outpost in the capital, only tends to draw people back to the capitals. The capitals therefore become trading hubs, perhaps the only trading hub of the nation, and serve as nothing more than cheese in a mousetrap. (So basically, you're setting yourself up to be surrounded if you don't keep on the move.) Expand. Set up outposts in far away lands. That way if SHTF at home, you have somewhere else to strike from. Get out of the capitals and live a little. If anything, the dutch made a blunder when they decided not to hold at least one or two of the ports they had in Haiti, such as Tiburon, from which they could expand outward if the need arose. Now they're being encircled at Willemstad by their enemies on all sides. But I don't think it's the end for the Dutch, it only makes things a bit harder as now they're having to fight operating out of their capital and nearby ports, rather than having the option of raising hell in some other area of the map. And I have to agree with what another poster commented, in that we don't need to make the capitals any safer than they already are. What is needed, is a design that encourages players to actually move around the map. Perhaps the re-distribution of resources so that you have to sail to different regions of the map to obtain them is needed, and you won't be able to just play near your capital and make short trade runs in order to craft all your first rates. Something to get people moving.

I have reduced my aspirations to simply boarding people with these new ships, breaking them up, and hoping for a 0.0000025% chance of obtaining a blueprint.

I think it'll be better. Right now there's not much reason for capturing ports. Unless your are forced down to 1 port, you really only need a few to get all the resources you need for crafting. With the current flag system, it's helpful to have 'forward bases' to extend your reach, but I assume this will be unnecessary with the new hostility system which will allow you to sail across the map, raise a fuss, and attack ports in that location. If the developers truly make resources region-specific, then we will see some real importance in trading/warfare.

I think he is asking: "Who is going to be willing to sail along with and defend someone else if there is no guarantee that they will share the loot?" To which I would say, be careful of who you are helping. Help only clan mates or people you can trust (hopefully those two are the same, or you might want to find a new clan, lol)

I agree that some perks/upgrades have magical abilities, but I try to justify it somewhat in the fact that no two ships were built exactly the same, and perks do at least offer some variation because you never know what your enemy's ship will handle like. I understand that it would be asking a lot of the developers, but I would like to see more variation put into shipbuilding that would affect the characteristics of ships, rather than the current system of upgrades and perks. What becomes very noticeable is when perks stack with other similar perks and upgrades and create magical super-ships that perform in ways that simply defy the realm of possibility. It's then you realize that you aren't just fighting a captain who reloads a little faster than you and must have well-trained gun crews (sounds realistic enough, right?), to realizing that you are fighting some sort of level-capped mage from World of Warcraft. Take for instance the mortar brig mentioned before. The difference in performance between someone who is sailing a mortar brig with no perk/no upgrades and someone who has: Gold mortar handbooks, mortar officer, light ship master, powder monkeys, improved magazine access. You can't even compare the two. The first is just a basic run-of-the-mill mortar brig which will struggle to destroy a single tower in 30 minutes. The other one with stacked upgrades and perks can destroy all towers in 30 minutes (true, he is useless in anything other than fighting towers in port battles, but, still, magical). The only way the prevent players from doing this is to make perks and upgrades' impacts more subtle, but then people decide that they aren't worth the effort to obtain. As maturin stated, it is very difficult to find balancing when you are trying to maintain some realism.

Alrighty then, onward to France.

I'm very curious about this myself. I'm just not quite sure what the developers have in mind for a system that will allow someone who is sleeping to defend against someone who is awake, regardless of whether port timers exist or not. I guess we'll have to see how it works when the new port battle update goes live. In the mean time, I'm browsing realtor ads for low-rent apartments in allied nations, because the US simply doesn't have the numbers to defend the amount of ports we have. I just hope we are more graceful in defeat, and accept that we may have to resort to guerrilla warfare or supporting roles rather than homeland defense. I keep thinking of Sting's "Englishman in New York", only it'll be Willemstad and Kingston filled with homeless expatriated US captains falling down drunk in the alleys behind their taverns. As the British said of American troops stationed in their country during WW2, "They're overpaid, oversexed, and over here."