Slamz
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Posts posted by Slamz
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Still a problem. No dev response. Is this the new official counter-contention method? In some areas (like Virgin Islands) this is more efficient than killing ships yourself because there are so many big fleets packed into those bay areas.
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8 hours ago, admin said:
we just need to increase pvp rewards and add special drops for pvp
That will make people who already PvP happier but I don't think it will make more people engage in activities that lead to PvP.
The bottom line problem with PvP is "finding targets" and contention is one of the best ways of doing that today. I just think we could create a whole lot more of that by sweetening the pot a little.
Worth a shot though. Maybe it will convince more people to go hunting.
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tl;dr: Grinding contention should be the #1 best way to PvE in this game.
I think one remaining problem is how people still avoid risky behavior.
You want money. You want random drops. You want ship XP. What do you do? If you're like most people, you grind 1st rate missions outside your nation's capital, inside the protected waters or else in the middle of nowhere, where nasty enemies don't know to look for you.
Grinding contention would be similar or better rewards in many places but you don't do that because it's risky.
Maybe we should up the rewards for this risky behavior?
3x rewards for grinding in contended areas:
- Encourages port battle generation.
- Encourages new players to participate in the RvR scene.
- Generates more PvP along border regions as both teams want that sweet grinding spot.
- Still allows for missions if you must live in safety but they are worth a lot less, relatively, than grinding.
- Even "bad" grind areas that are thin on traffic are probably worthwhile now.
- Shows people where the action is at, just by looking at the map. Even if you are grinding + counter-grinding an area in cooperation with another nation, any group of privateers can look at the map and see what's going on and know "there are players there".
- War. War everywhere.
Also thinking there could be a pop-up reward for making a port hit 100 or 0, based on the work you, personally, did to get it there.
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Fleet 1 seems mandatory for eveyone to me. PvPers need it if they ever want to capture an enemy ship without losing their own. PvErs will all want it for adding a ship to fleet to help them do missions. Traders will want it for more cargo room. I can't imagine anyone NOT having Fleet 1 regardless of what their play style is. Fleet 2 is clearly more optional and Fleet 3 is downright specialized/niche.
Control is very optional. PvErs and traders obviously have no use for it. Most PvPers skip it too, especially group players. I think Control is really a specialty perk for a particular playstyle, so it makes sense to charge for it.
IMO, if a perk is universally used by everyone then either it's too powerful and needs to be nerfed or, as in this case, it's such a basic part of the game that it might as well just be included because it makes no sense to not select it or to ever select something else instead.
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3 hours ago, Louis Garneray said:
Maybe we should completely ignore them and find some pvp where we could get some.
It's really a question of whether or not we care about RvR at all.
If you care about RvR 0% then yeah -- ignore them, go sink people. It may come to that anyway. But if that had been my intention from the start, I would have gone Pirate, since they have a lovely central location on the map from which to launch as a pure PvP raid team (this is not how most of them play, I'm just saying it's a good location if that's what I wanted to do).
I do care some about RvR. I care enough that I will do some occasional port grinds just to piss off the Danes at this point. I would enjoy the occasional [real] port battle. Obviously I am not willing to bob anyone's knob to do this, as certain-French-guilds-who-shall-remain-nameless are very openly doing, but it would be a nice addition to my week for the sake of variety.
But yes, there does need to be a balance.If Danes one-port us my intent is to PvP about 3 days out of 4. I will just hunt people on the open sea in a wolfpack, giving some special attention to any Danes I can find. 1 day out of 4 I will round up the fellas and grind another port battle at the most inconvenient time for the Danes to deal with and they will never, ever be quite rid of us.
The Danes made a deal with us: temporary possession of the Terre regions, generate conquest marks, and then return those ports.
Danes reneged on this deal at the last minute and said we would never get those regions back.
As long as I play this game, I will, from time to time, merrily stab the Danes in the back as a reminder of the deal they broke and what they owe the French team. (Yo, CCCP, where's my regions, huh? You got til 5 o'clock.)
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Yeah maybe the easiest answer is just this:
Contention is based on XP generation.
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3 hours ago, squedage said:
just waiting over here with my popcorn for when the danes 1 port the french
I'm curious what you think will happen then.
It's already easy to obtain materials via alts. The only thing you REALLY lose is the ability to easily teleport. With smuggler flags you don't even lose access to trade goods. In a way I kind of wonder if this is something we need to think about: being one ported really doesn't hurt an organized guild at all. Should it? If so, how?
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Another option would be to eliminate the ability to pull friendly NPCs into a battle but I'd kind of hate to see that. That was how we ground up a lot of XP back in the day: follow a big friendly fleet and then tag an enemy fleet that got too close and have a huge shootout. Good fun.
But as a contention generating method, it does need thinking about, especially the ability to do it in a Basic Cutter.
You shouldn't be able to generate thousands of points of contention for 100% free with absolutely zero risk.Really maybe the answer is that only fights started with a 6th rate warship or better can generate contention.
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Incidentally (in case anyone is still interested), I do want to formalize the situation for @MaxBlackHawk
CCCP agreed to give back Basse-Terre and Grande-Terre in the agreement.CCCP broke the agreement when they stated we would only get them back "when the new diplomacy system goes live".
CCCP broke the agreement. This is why we returned to a state of war.
CCCP is a dishonorable clan if they do not immediately return to the original conditions of the deal.
PURGE will never quit France and all CCCP will continue to be killed on sight until the original deal is delivered.
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27 minutes ago, Hodo said:
Well I picked up this game last year around the summer sail.. so I can say if I havent gone yet I will still be here after 3 weeks.
You are also an open sea PvPer, from what I understand, as am I (and Vllad). That keeps the game lots of fun for us. We're basically the killers, always at war.
I just think that "strategic thinking" (especially avoiding wars) is a big factor in other people thinking this game is boring. It CAN be tons of fun but if you let the desire to "win the RvR game" drive your game style, it can become a very boring game.
A great example is how there are 3 teams on our server that I know have good Oceanic time zone numbers. All 3 have a non-aggression pact with each other. All three engage in port flips against the teams that don't have an Oceanic time zone contingent that can fight them.They're "winning" but literally not fighting each other. Sun Tzu says yes, Slamz Tzu says that's a pretty stupid way to play a video game if you don't want your guild members to slowly vanish to find more fun somewhere else.
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16 minutes ago, Hodo said:
Actually applying Sun Tzu's art of war doctrine to a game does make sense.
Does it? I believe that thinking is what made 90% of the playerbase quit last year: everyone was more interested in "winning" than in fighting and the game gave you too many ways to win without fighting. It was boring and stupid and everyone quit.
e.g., false flag caps or "screening fleets" meant to drag people into a battle with no intention of really sinking them, just to keep them out of port battles. Night caps so they can't show up. 4 port battles at once, knowing they can only possibly show up at 1 or 2. Various things that made it super easy to hide and gank.
Ideally a game forces you to think like Sun Tzu AND fight. You use strategy to direct the fighting but there is lots of fighting. Naval Action still doesn't quite have this aspect (though patch 10 is much better than what we had last year).
If your strategy is making you win the game but is also making the game boring then you might as well be shopping that summer Steam sale right now because in 3 weeks you're going to be somewhere else anyway.
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I keep telling people they are honestly better off if they let [WO] stay in Haiti and let France maintain their base area, because we end up getting greedy and doing silly things like making lineships, which takes up a lot of our time. If we stop wasting time doing that dumb stuff, we will just spend more time hunting traders and ganking mission runners, which is mostly what we enjoy anyway. It's like HAVING ports makes us feel somewhat obligated to defend them but once they are gone we are not going to spend a lot of time or effort on that aspect of the game anymore. We'll just hunt you and kill you for amusement.
Having France as a neighbor is like having a rowdy redneck family as a neighbor. Sure they're loud and obnoxious and they lower property values with the rusted out car on cinder blocks in their front yard but when the drug lords try to take over the neighborhood, it turns out the rednecks have more guns, are more willing to use them and are better at it than the drug lords.
Kick us out and the drug lords will be your new neighbors and you'll like them a lot less than you liked us.
(And we'll still be around, except we'll mainly be driving drunkenly through the neighborhood, shooting out everyone's windows and setting your mailboxes on fire.)
I basically told the pirates this last year, during the French-Pirate wars.
They didn't believe me either.
They quit about 3 weeks later.
But I like being able to say "I told you so".
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3 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:
Some of us are smart enough to not have multi front wars.
/eyeroll
Lord forbid anyone have to really fight in this game.
This is the most fun I've had since the French-Pirate wars of last year. How the hell people sit around farming for 1st rates and then bending over backwards to obtain excuses to never use them, I just don't understand.
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CCCP bragging because they won a 4v1 against a 3 week old character, lol. Zouji only made Capitaine de Pavillion 2 days ago!
Meanwhile, the CCCP guy whose Bucentere I stole was found wandering on the sea in a Cerberus. I tested his mettle using my storebought Renommee. As you can see, they are not very good 1v1. Basically like fighting an NPC except NPCs have better aim.
I heard pirates are allied with CCCP. I don't see why. Pirates should pick allies who can actually fight and not just night cap and hide under forts.
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On 6/24/2017 at 1:19 AM, Galt said:
and that we need to get the French out of the area.
You'd probably be better off with France in there as a buffer. The Haiti French are avid PvPers but aren't interested in flipping ports.
You're opening up your border to the Danes and eventually they will start taking your ports. They won't PvP you but they'll just start scooping up your ports, which they will only attack at 8am eastern. They'll do it even as they call you an ally, "for your own protection".
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I warn you against dealing with CCCP.
France did that and look where that got us.
Here is a secret video of the French dealings with CCCP:
You'll have what sounds like a good deal but as you have just displayed weakness, CCCP will find it convenient to alter the deal repeatedly, getting worse and worse for you. By the time you decide you have to fight them, they have half your territory. This is their exact plan and is exactly what they did to France. They are a very dishonorable guild and you're a fool if you trust them. (I want to say this now so that in about 1 month I can tell you I told you so.)
Plus, as Bach mentioned, CCCP is an Oceanic time zone guild.
If British oceanic time zone players want to do something other than chase people in half empty port battles, they should be fighting the Danes, who are in their time zone.
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4 hours ago, AvroArrow said:
Dutch is using a spy
Maybe but it's really not necessary for the results they are getting.
They know where you guys moved to and just show up there every day. That Victory got busted right in the channel mouth, which is an obvious place to camp. If I knew where CCCP was soloing missions with 1st rates you can bet I'd be taking daily trips up there too!
I also think you underestimate how badly ICS hurt itself when it undermined and went against every other French clan, and how it continues to destroy its reputation by not showing up to fight the Danes. There are a lot of good PvP clans in France and the reason you don't see more of them patrolling around Dutch waters more often is because ICS has pissed them off so badly, they don't want to go down there and have to look at you.
I keep waiting for ICS to turn over a new leaf and you keep not doing it. Repairing relations with the other clans is, I think, easy enough to do: start fighting for the team and not just farming conquest marks and sitting in your corner. We're actually doing well against CCCP but another 10 fighters would go a long way.-
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[PURGE] never accepted your proposal.
You did not know because you did not ask us. [ICS] does not speak for or represent [PURGE].
[PURGE] agreement is the same as always: return Basse-Terre and Grand-Terre (and Dominica if you take that).
Then the war is over. [BORK] agrees.
Not before.
We will sink you everywhere we see you until Basse Terre and Grand Terre are returned to France.
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(Just for the record, my fight stats were actually from the Constitution. The Buc I'm in is the one we captured at the very end. 3 kill credits in the Connie and 5 assists! That thing is a beast. Aristocrat also didn't get sunk directly but was too close to an exploding CCCP. Great job to everyone in that fight.)
edit: here we go. Found a shot from earlier in the fight so we can see what's what.
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5 minutes ago, Drunken Spelunking said:
From whom would you defend France from Basse/Grand Terre? That location makes little strategic sense and two regions are definitely not required for "defending France". Sounds like a bunch of hastily produced bull to me...
Maybe he has a good idea here.
We will take the Virgin Islands to better defend Denmark.
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2 minutes ago, as24862486 said:
Why we want Basse/Grand terre?!
When we have those back, war is over.
Until then, CCCP ships will be relocated to the bottom of the ocean. You will not safely trade while we are online.
CCCP is a dishonorable clan. Nobody should make deals with you. ICS was foolish to do so. We will not make their mistakes.
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2 hours ago, Digital Wind said:
So the pvp1 guys get to decide the direction of the entire nation?
Well, just to digress into some Naval Action game theory:
Any 1 clan that is capable of creating a threatening port battle can direct national war policy (to a large extent).
This is why most "peace deals" are really just an agreement between the port-flip-capable clans to not flip any ports. There will always, always be solos and tiny guilds out there that just sink everything but without a big enough clan backing them up, they can't flip ports and are merely a PvP threat, not an RvR threat.
This is also why a lot of peace deals just allow for PvP to occur. We'll shoot you if we see you, we just won't flip your ports. This just saves a lot of squabbling and confusion but prevents things from really flaring up.
So yes, if the PvP1 guys are big enough to flip ports then they are a real threat.
Semi-related:
This is also why the Danish clan [CCCP] cannot be negotiated with. They see no difference between PvP and RvR. If they make peace with your "nation" and literally anyone under your nation's flag attacks any of their ships anywhere, they see it the same as full RvR, which is actually how the entire French-Dane problem started to begin with, 2 weeks ago. Some randos from a pickup guild hit one of their traders.Learn from France. Do not negotiate with the Danes. Kill on sight.
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1 hour ago, Lonar said:
So you think it is ok when someone does such posts in the EU-Server Forum but if its in yours you come with insults
Or -- and I'm just floating this out there as a crazy, half-baked idea -- maybe you're both wrong.
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Development Roadmap for the next 3-5 months
in News Announcements & Important discussions
Posted
My priority issues:
1) Fix basic cutter exploits [as seen in recent Tribunals -- basic cutters impacting how port flips work, either by grinding NPC fleets against each other or by holding needed fleets locked in combat for 90 minutes)
I like your idea on making the reward for conquest be extra labor hours though. Anyone can make 1st rates but people earning conquest marks will not be constrained by labor hours (they will still be constrained by money and hauling).