Slamz
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Posts posted by Slamz
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Just an idea that I think would make it more palatable for people to put ships on the market for sale: the ability to lock them to a particular nation (they cannot be traded to another nation).
A French player who wants to put ships on the market knows that literally anyone can make an alt, buy the ship and sail it against France. Most people counter this by simply not selling ships on the market. They only do individual trades face to face so they know who the buyer is.
What if, instead, we could lock ships to a nation? If I lock my ship to France, it cannot be traded away to a pirate or a Brit, etc.
"What about captures?"
Capturing still works like normal -- if someone wants to use an alt to buy a French ship and then capture it into 5 separate durability ships (each of which will lose all of their repair kits and upgrades the first time they sink) then I'm okay with that. That important thing is that they won't get fully functional 5 durability Trincomalee out of it.
It's not total proof against ship trading but it's a significant barrier and seems like something that would be very easy to do.
If you WANT to market your ship internationally, you would just not check the "Lock Ship" box.
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Nice job sinking those heavy ships with lights and no losses. Assuming all those who left before you took the screenshot were Navy Brigs, you were actually outweighed by a fair amount of BR (more, if any were Snows).
This is something Purge learned fighting pirates, too. It is a big PITA trying to sink a 3rd rate with 6 pound cannons but it's definitely not a waste of time to try.
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I have found a dramatic video of the first French/Swedish/British interactions.
You monsters.
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I'm prolly too old for this shit, but that has me more worried that the actual troll.
I think it's more a question of how much experience you have in how many multiplayer online communities. After seeing a few good games literally ruined by a lack of community policing, I would rather risk too much than too little.
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So: if ten customers (after having expressed on the forums their opinion) really want to leave a game only because - on one side - one faction met a two days delay in the conquest of one port and - on the other side - the pair of players that made this atrocious thing possible are not instapermabanned form the game, my opinion is that those ten customers do not really like the game. And - therefore - it's better loosing them now than later.
To be clear, those 10 players wouldn't just be quitting because someone got away with something -- they would be quitting over the perception that the game is tilting into lawless trolling and if they continue to play, they are just going to keep getting their game experience ruined anyway. If 1 person can get away with trolling the game today, then 10 people can get away with it tomorrow and 100 after that.
In that case, they reason, why not cut our losses now rather than watching the game get slowly and inevitably destroyed by trolls anyway?
That's why I argue that this really isn't about what 1 or 2 people did one day. It's about the perception of whether intentional, meta-gaming, same-team trolling is acceptable or not. (And then wasting the developers' time tracking them down because they took measures to hide their tracks.)
This case would be a lot fuzzier if, say, the Dutch had bought a flag to prevent the British from buying a flag (I'm not sure if that's how the mechanics work, but just for example's sake). Then at least there's a real RvR argument to be had and the result might be "Annoying enough that the devs should put in a fix, but not really an exploit."
But doing it as a same-team flag purchase crossed an obvious line.
Doing it with an alt giving money to an alt that gets deleted just underscores it.
In summary,
burn the witches.
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What games have you played that does this over mechanics abuse?
It's really a question of how flagrant and disruptive something is.
If you go onto a paintball course and ruin the game for 2 hours, they're not going to warn you. They're going to kick you out and tell you to never come back.
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Wiping his account or a long term ban looses us a player for good. He paid his money to play and found an exploit. A harsh warning should suffice.
My experience in gaming says that if you catch someone doing something bad once, it's because they did another dozen things just as bad that you didn't catch. There's a certain mindset at work that's almost certainly not going to change because you warned them. Frankly they'll probably keep that mindset for life, into every game they play.
Losing them is usually a perk and an improvement to the community.
I don't believe in the efficacy of punishing perpetrators and hoping that will be a deterrent for future shenanigans by others.
And again based on my experience in online gaming, NOT punishing perpetrators will literally cause the demise of the entire community.
The only times I've seen communities get saved is when word gets around that "if you do this sort of thing, they can detect it and you will get banned". Otherwise, it always gets worse. Don't underestimate the damage that can be done by trolls, griefers and script kiddies. You're probably thinking this is just one guy, doing just one thing, but what we're really establishing here is precedent for a whole lot more of the same.
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Lol, To convict someone legally has to be a written rule, if not written no condemnation. First write the laws.
Just for the record, Tribunals are for "community issues", such as unsportsmanlike behavior that may be subject to opinion.
I think if it was definitely an exploit (like a hack or obvious bug abuse), the admin wouldn't even have asked. He would have just banned the people.
Since it's a "community issue" we the players have more sway in what we think is allowable and what the punishment should be.
Earlier I called this an exploit but I was getting carried away. Really it's just "intentional griefing". Possibly the developers could address this issue by changing some game mechanics but as it stands it's not really a bug and therefore not an "exploit". But buying a flag on an alt and then sitting on it to prevent a port cap is flagrant griefing, meta-gaming, something we definitely do not want to become a trend and I vote we rain down retribution upon these people -- all the moreso because they tried to hide it.
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did he cheat or use a game mechanic that is in the game? what rule did he break?
A big point for me is that he did this with an alt and then deleted that alt, and had the money transferred from another alt.
That implies he knew it was wrong and knew they would come looking for him.
He just didn't factor in that this sort of thing might persist in logs after character deletion.
It would be slightly different if this was some legitimate trader alt or a grudge or something and the guy stood up and said, "What? I thought that was legit." Clearly he thought it was wrong and took steps to hide his actions.
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...I would also consider reducing the penalty if the offending player(s) showed up at this Tribunal and admitted guilt and described who they are and what they did and that they knew it was wrong and that they are very sorry.
You have 24 hours to comply...
Making the admins weasel out your primary account = full penalty.
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Neverdie is also midshipman, thus likely another alt. Did he earn the money (unlikely), or was it transferred there also?
This will have to be tracked back to a real player before any real punishment can be doled out. The fact that it was an alt giving to an alt seems to imply that they knew they were doing something bad, though. This was planned.
--------------In the criminal justice system, there's a concept of degrees of murder:
Manslaughter: accidental death.
3rd degree murder: intentional murder in a moment of heated emotion, such as finding your wife in bed with another man.
2nd degree murder: intentional murder, not premeditated and not with any particularly good excuse, such as a bar fight.
1st degree murder: intentional and premeditated.
This looks like a "1st degree exploit". Not just casually testing but actually setting up an alt to give to an alt to intentionally grief and then delete the alt, trying to hide the trail (and then having an alt that gave the cash for an extra layer of protection).
This should carry a more severe penalty than a "2nd degree exploit" or "exploit in the heat of the moment".
The prosecution suggests this was done intentionally with malice and forethought.
As this is alpha, I would not necessarily perma-ban all accounts but I would reset their XP to 0. "Thank you for testing, you can now re-test the lower level ranks while you're at it." (If they turn out to be low level, I would additionally issue a 7 day ban.)
If this was release I would have suggested a permanent ban for all Steam accounts.
If they had not gone to the trouble of hiding their main account(s), I would have suggested a much lighter "just alpha/testing/lols" penalty.
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Sure, but I can only say once again, the clans that actually want economic PvP could just as well have it if all those big costs were incurred with things like harbor defenses and troop ships, rather than forcing that aspect of the game into absolutely every possible mode of play by going straight to the one thing you need to play the game at all with, which is ships.
The whole fear of "everyone is in a 1st rate" is a symptom of the fact that there is no good reason to use anything else, and that's what needs to be addressed rather than simply saying "Well obviously everyone would want to use this one thing, so we just need to make sure not everyone can have it".
This runs into what I call the "PvP/PvE ratio" and the debate of what an acceptable ratio is -- how much tedious, boring PvE is required to sustain an hour of PvP?
Your argument seems to be that the acceptable PvE amount must be 0. No matter how much you PvP and how many ships you lose, you seem to want 0 PvE to be required to support this. You think this would result in endless glorious PvP but in my experience it leads to PvP itself feeling like a grind and the game becoming boring because even if I beat you 100 times in a row, there you are again, coming at me in the exact same ship I just sunk 100 times already.
This is a problem with a lot of MMORPGs that have open world combat. If this was WOW, I would beat you in open world PvP and then run away because if I don't run away you might just keep spawn rushing me from the graveyard and I don't especially want to fight you ten times in a row. WOW PvP was really just a battle of who was the hardest to bore because in the end, that's who was left standing in an area: the guy that was the hardest to bore and just kept coming back regardless of if he won or not. Naval Action could easily turn into that. We sink two dozen 3rd rates and here they come again! Sink them again and poof, there they are!
We must, at some point, be able to actually force you to stop and deal with the fact that you are losing ships.
So I think meaningful PvP requires personal loss.
That's why I think the ratio cannot have 0 PvE in it. Maybe it could be 1 hour of PvE sustains 10 hours of PvP. Or maybe it's 1:1. I'm not sure what the magic number is. I don't want it so much PvE that I feel like that's mostly all I'm doing but I also don't want it to be 0 PvE, implying PvP has no loss and therefore is "just for funsies".
It's not just for funsies if sinking you a few times means you have to go off and grind fleets for an hour.
So, back to the topic, my concern is that easily farmable 3rd rates makes the ratio too low: too little PvE is required to sustain a 3rd rate PvP habit and therefore the PvP does not have as much meaning as it should.
For that matter, I think 5 durability on regular ships might be about 2 too many.
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The problem with PvP losses in this game is simply that it's your ability to participate that's under threat when your ship is under threat.
This is part of economic PvP.
The real question should be "what's the base level of sustainable PvP ship" and "is that fun".
So far I have never had to take a step down because I couldn't afford the PvP at my level anymore (which is one under 3rd rate) and even if I did I'm pretty sure I could still enjoy it. Part of open world / sandbox PvP is grouping up and finding fights you can win, which for us sometimes meant beating 3rd rates and Constitutions using Snows, Mercuries and Cerberuses.
So let's assume I'm top rank and find I cannot afford to PvP in 1st rates or even 3rd rates -- it's just too expensive in materials and my wins aren't paying for it.
Fine. So I have to PvP in....a Trincom? A Frigate? A Surprise, even? Maybe I have to stop using Exceptionals and go with Basics?
I'm pretty sure that would still be fun for me and the fact that I have been pushed out of my 1st rate is a noticeable victory for my enemies.
This is why we can't have 3rd rates basically be floating around for free on the open sea. I'm not sure what the "base level / sustainable PvP ship" should be, but I don't think it needs to be a 3rd rate.
If we sink two dozen 3rd rates in a port battle, that needs to mean something.
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The issue of losing players is not poor leadership it's the game, it's becoming boring for a lot and extremely bland with nothing to do, there has been an extreme drop in players in the last 2 weeks.
What are you doing right now?
If I was you, I think I would be dragging my clan up to at least 2 different U.S. area free ports and operating out of there, sacking all the U.S. ships we can catch and alternating between the free ports if one area gets too hot. Eventually try to drag a flag up and take a port -- deep water if you think you can get 25 heavies in to defend it, otherwise shallow and park a bunch of Navy Brigs there for defense.
We French have a bit of a problem in that we don't have an especially exciting area to attack from at the moment -- a problem we must soon fix -- but you Brits already have the ideal territory to attack from.
I don't see why you're bored unless you just find endless PvP to be boring. Remember it doesn't have to be a frontal assault.
If you aren't getting endless PvP then I have to ask "why not". Seems like you're in the ideal position for it.
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I wouldn't doubt that the U.S. (and probably Britain) are losing players. Same problem that wrecked the pirate team: leadership is not doing enough to push the players into the hard-hitting PvP battles, which is actually where the real fun is.
Maybe they are and I'm just not in a position to see it, but that's the impression I have -- bored British guilds wandering over the mess around with the Swedes. Bored U.S. guilds wandering over to mess around with literally empty French ports. People still attacking the Spanish in general. Maybe these are just the derp guilds but I hope there's a big war going on between the major powers because if there's not, you guys are going to bore your own nations out of the game.
I do think this version of the alpha does not create enough war pressure, so players feel tempted to just sit around and grind NPC fleets, but even admin himself has said this is "boring as hell".
If you want to retain players, you must start wars, preferably big, violent wars against the biggest powers you can find.
And not just concentrations of 150 ships in one part of the map (which might actually cause PvP to not happen) but really running around in enemy territory, setting up outposts at Free Ports and hunting for players.
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It was the Yag flag that disconnected. The Pedernales flag got overturned in combat and sank.
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Britain kind of caused its own predicament. They gobbled up all the ports in the middle of the map, basically guaranteeing that any other two powers who want to fight probably have to go through Britain to do it. (Can't really blame "the British" for this since it only takes about 6 people to cap a port, but that's the map situation we are in now.)
To really open up a front on the U.S., France would probably need some northern Haiti ports.....which are in British hands. Or maybe we could do it from the Dominican Republic area....which is in British hands. We could get there with a stepping stone from Puerto Rico.....which is British. Arguably we could go from the gulf coast but frankly that's too far away and too boring for most of us.
Sweden, the Dutch and the Danes all have the same problem: regardless of how much they may want to attack the U.S., the British are pretty well in the way.
Things might get real interesting if the British focused primarily on Cuba and maybe the southern part of Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican area) and simply agreed to abandon northern Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.
This could result in a 3-way (or more) war in those areas. The balance of power would ebb and wane between who controls these central areas......and right now it's controlled by the British.
Basically I think the map of the Caribbean has a certain "king of the hill" component to it, and the British have put themselves firmly onto the hill.
Regardless of who is the greatest power in the land for real, the British are on the hill.
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Adding an economic grind does add depth, namely because you would like to not do it, and therefore it adds a reason to PvP with a mind towards tactics and strategy.
With no loss, "zerg" strategy is always fine. No real reason to think too hard about anything you're doing because it really doesn't matter anyway.
But if sinking you means you have to go off and grind for an hour, well, now you have real incentive to think about this fight -- and maybe the war in general. Creating an interesting balance between pressures that make you want to go to war and pressures that make you not want to lose is critical to making this game be fun and interesting long term.
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Not exactly big fish here but we can only sink what people actually show up with.
Wait for it....
waaaaaaait for iiiiiit...
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Nope, that problem only crops up when you make progress only about getting stronger rather than about specializing to suit your play style and continuous adaptation as your style and the game evolve.
It's really about making sure there's an RvR game and economic warfare and not just 500 of us sitting in fully decked out 1st rates staring at each other because ships literally do not matter and therefore neither do ports and there's no reason to fight except "for funsies".
This is why I found Planetside to get boring fast, too. There's just no point in the war because nobody ever loses anything. It's basically just a pointless arena match on slightly varied terrain. Doesn't matter how fun the combat is if it's just the same thing day after day with no meaningful goal (not just "points" but something the players can actually feel).
I hope for this game to have more depth than that.
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No, this game needs more parts that allow people to make progress and not just constantly struggle against upkeep, not fewer. It's already ruined by people insisting that everything must be limited by grind.
What do you propose progress consist of 6 months from now when everyone has a full load of exceptional upgrades and "exceptional" is just standard? (And why do you suppose anyone would ever use anything less than Exceptional? Crafters will be able to make them no problem.)
"Progress" is a silly carrot to put in front of people when you know you can't keep moving it out. It only works in MMORPGs that can constantly increase levels and stats. I'm not sure that'll work in this game unless we start using fantasy elements.
Do you propose that we keep raising the bar to keep this progress going? Or are you prepared for all "progress" to end in a few months?
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Currently, upgrades do not have durability. Permanent ones go down with the ship but regulars just stay with you, unless you mess up and leave them on a ship that only has 1 durability.
6 months from now, we will all just be sitting on a pile of our favorite golden upgrades. You will actually vendor junk exceptional extra pumps because you will already have one on every ship and another at each outpost for spare and they're just cluttering up your inventory.
What if regular upgrades had.......10 durability?
You lose the ship, you lose a durability on your ship but also on your regular mods.
Eventually you will have to acquire more.
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On the contrary, this will make the game way more strategic and way less prone to gank squads.
Actually it would benefit gank squads operating in enemy territory (where gank squads typically operate).
For the gank squad, they know that every ship they see is either enemy or NPC. There won't be any friendlies around these parts. The fact that identification is hidden from them doesn't hurt them much -- any oddly moving ship is going to be a target enemy.
For the people trying to hunt the gankers it will be a non-stop procession of "THERE THEY ARE", "no wait that's friendly", "THAT's THEM", "no, wait, friendly again", "OVER THERE", "nope, more friendlies".
This is a realism feature that seems like it would just hurt playability with no clear benefit.
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Original post said "tentative" on production buildings. Any word on if they're actually going to be in or not? (Guessing not?)
Abuse of flag mechanics 2 - decision needed
in Tribunal - Трибунал
Posted
So.....a nation of 2000 players can, in total, create an alt on another team, block the flag and troll everyone 6000 times before any one of them gets anything worse than a 2-day suspension?
Warnings are for things that are very mildly disruptive. If you bombard the enemy with expletives and get reported, maybe that's a warning. You didn't really wreck the game, you just said bad words in chat, here's your slap on the wrist.
If you blatantly grief your own team to stop a bunch of people from doing something that might have entertained all of them for the next 90 minutes, then you get a lot more than just a warning. That's pretty close to permanent banhammer time in my book.
To contrast, this is like showing up to the local football game and stealing all the balls, thus ruining the entire night of gaming for everyone. They aren't going to just say, "Oh, you! This is your first warning! Next time you're going to get a talking to!"
They're going to tell you to gtfo and they'll call the cops for trespassing charges if they ever see you there again.