Slamz

Did they? Or did you? It's not a job to go PvP in 5th rates or even 4th rates. Throw in a Bellona now and then. Still not a job. What are you doing wrong that you feel like it's a job, I wonder? Grinding 5 slots? You don't need them. Farming up the perfect permanent slots? You don't need those either. Farming for that final book you need for the Gunnery Encyclopedia or something like that? Still not needed. Full fleet of 1st rates? Just ignore the line ship ports. The only one turning this into a job is you. Also, why did you flip Trinidad for 30 minutes after we flipped Dominica? You had to know we couldn't do both at the same time. Right after Dominica we had the fleet sailing down and you guys had already left. But you also have to know that France does not have -- or care to have -- a full fleet of 25 first rates. We will never fight you in your slow boat 1st rate battles. We have no reason to and we don't find it fun. That's the "job" you created and we ignored. Developers didn't do that to you. You chose it.

I think the poo flinging serves a good purpose, though: it's attacking the current culture of the community. And that's good because it's the current culture that is about 90% of the problem. EVE always had a culture of "just go fight". Grab your T1 frigate with no rigs and basic gear and just go hunt. Die, get another one, go hunt more. Get friends in T1 frigates and go hunt in packs. If you can afford better, use better but, the culture says, don't sit there and complain about the cost of T2 battleships and the cost of rigs and the cost of improved weapons when you can just go hunting in T1 frigates and actually get kills. NA should have that same culture. It actually works better here, I think. The gap between a Snow and a Santissima is a whole lot narrower than between a T1 Frigate and a Titan or something like that. If EVE was populated by this crop of NA players, it would fail, not because it's a bad game that's "too much grind" but because there's a wrong-headed culture telling people to play in ways that are fairly ridiculous. ("I can't PvP! I can't afford my 3rd Bermuda Victory and I only have 4 slots unlocked on it and I'm missing one book and I can't find a Copper Plating for it! I'm helpless out there!" Meanwhile there are people getting kills in a storebought Renom with 2 slots.) Wow, you still don't get it. I still have 2 forged papers. Think. Think real hard about why I have not used them. I'll save you the trouble: because it does not matter what team you are on or what ports you own. I could switch to Pirate right now. Or Dane. I don't do it because I don't need to. I can live in La Navasse or La Tortue or La Mona just fine. WO, who has sank more pirates than any other clan, has been living in free ports since the fall of Haiti. The amount of trouble of moving my guild warehouse is not worth the minuscule improvement in gameplay I would experience by moving to some other team. You're turning into that guy who screams about chem-trails and the government poisoning our water. Not everything is a conspiracy. Teutonic just wants PvP fights to be something that's easier to find. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Duncan.

Those are so very optional though. My PvP ships have had the admiralty speed figure head, the Northern Carpenters (which I make myself and are cheap -- the components are common) and the 3rd mod is usually just whatever I have laying around. Accuracy or reload is nice. Since the Great Speed Nerf, I find it very questionable to burn up another slot on an additional 1-2% speed. You're talking about a difference that you can make up with a couple of rounds of your chasers firing chain shot. So this is another "the grind is what you make of it". Yeah sure you CAN grind out tenfold the ship value in mods but it is far from mandatory and is unlikely to make a difference. It's a damn close fight where you could have swung it the other way if only you'd had [insert one or two mods here]. That pretty much never happens. Well, real time is. Labor hours are not, unless you're pumping out 1st rates. For 5th rates, you cannot possibly lose ships fast enough to account for all the labor hours you generate. The real limiting factor in ship making is just the hauling runs. In a healthier economy, gold still talks though. Even within France on PvP-Global I've had orders filled for coal, gold ore, teak logs, fir logs, oak logs, etc. I just put up buy orders for what I felt was a reasonably attractive price (higher than any NPC will pay anywhere) and generally someone fills it. I could have saved money and gone to pick up the stuff myself but when I'm sitting on a few million gold, I'm happy to pay someone else to do it if there's a taker. Point being, I still don't buy this argument that people don't PvP because they can't afford to -- not after a month of gameplay. Maybe if you're a new player on a team that's hopelessly camped and one-ported -- but, for example, there is no excuse for any British or Pirate player on PvP-Global to say they aren't ready for PvP if they're been here for a month. They're ready. They're just dragging their feet waiting for some pie in the sky ideal that's really just become an excuse to not take a risk. If someone joined France-Global within the last week then okay, I can get that they are not ready and are have a real hard time getting ready. There is definitely a new player problem that can be addressed here. But veterans? No excuse except an excess of risk-aversion.

This is the realization everyone needs to make. They spend way too much time grinding when they don't need to. Or they could at least group up and grind contention, which has double benefit. I actually think missions have done a lot to kill this game: they encourage people to solo, if nothing else. It's good to "support" solo play but when solo missions are superior in every way to grouping up and hunting on the open world then we're sending this game down into a death spiral as groups disintegrate and people find it that much easier to quit playing.

You can't raise 60k for a Surprise? I made more money than that just dumping looted medium cannons into sell contracts. I think this is all psychological and ignores all the easy money we can get from trade goods now, too. Or from dumping crafted goods into free ports. That's easy money too.

Yes but I see two choices: 1) Interesting OW PvP with no set meta and a variety of ships and which I could log on and potentially find within 10 minutes with little or no organization required. 2) Set-piece PB PvP all following the same meta (slowboat tank) which takes about 2 hours to arrange and 49 other people to participate and we must be online at a particular place at a particular time with particular ships. #2 sure looks like a stupid waste of time to me when #1 is better gameplay in every way. If I was king, I would somehow make this entire game revolve around OW PvP and just get rid of "port battles" which serve no purpose. I really don't understand your fascination with port battles. I would rather have 25v25 open sea (which would also be far deadlier).

This is generally the argument for camping capital areas: We know they have organized groups of high level players. That's who we really want to fight but we don't know where they are. Camping the capital is an effort to draw them out. And, again, there's also a hope of catching the high level veterans grinding 1st rate missions, since a lot of people do that at capitals.

There is one good reason: Because the "capital safe zone" is used primarily by max level veterans who are grinding 1st rates. I don't see why that should be a "newbie zone" activity. In EVE, highsec space only gave you newbie tier missions. You needed to get into lowsec for anything better (and nullsec had superior "open world" grinding). So what we really need here is: Home area "highsec" -- low level missions and basic ship ingredients only. You get NPC help here and battles never close for native defenders. Everywhere else "nullsec" -- top 3 rank missions are here along with rare woods and trade goods (and maybe gold/silver). Attackers also get reduced rewards (maybe reduced to 0) for kills in the "highsec" area. But there is also little reason for veterans to live their entire lives in the safe zone -- they can't, if they want the good stuff.

Your personal credibility has been reset to 0, JobaSet.

I had heard this rumor but refused to believe it. You refuse to PvP until you have 5 slots unlocked. All those people I sunk using ships with 1-3 slots unlocked.....I had no idea I was doing it so wrong! You know unless you're doing a dedicated boarding ship, you can PvP quite well in a ship with no slots unlocked. 1-3 slots for a few important mods is good but 5 slots is just an excuse to hide and hope things blow over. I really do think BLACK would be happiest if the server consisted of nothing but them and CCCP staring at each other longingly on a map with no enemies.

I keep hearing this argument but still don't believe it. Is there any veteran who is not doing PvP because he can't afford to? He has lost too much and no longer has the time to build more ships? How many people quit playing and still had 3-4 perfectly good ships sitting in dock? I don't think affordability has ever been the problem, at least not for OW PvP.

I wish I'd saved more. I would love to see a monthly tally or searchable database of day by day history.

I do think about joining the Pirates sometimes. We would still fight them and we would do it from their own ports. We'd have great access to attack any other team from, too. We could still fight the Danes and they couldn't take "our" ports without also taking "BLACK's" ports. The main thing holding me back is how annoying it would be to move our clan warehouse. There was an idea brought up in another thread that basically suggested if 100% of the population joined the pirates, we'd have a potentially awesome FFA server.

Teutonic's entire plan is built around the idea that nobody seems very interested in PBs. Clan wars will also reset the map anyway, whenever that happens.

The problem is not that you are a metagamer. The problem is you assume everyone else is. We tell you ports don't matter and you assume we are trying to be sneaky and meta-game the situation so you won't attack us. Clearly, you think, we are deeply fearful of losing ports because the only reason we would claim they don't matter is if they really matter a lot and we are trying to trick you. Thanks, Vizzini. But no. I want a better game. Saying ports don't matter is less about trying to trick wily old Duncan McFail, and more about informing everyone of a deep flaw in the system: they really do not matter. Alts. Smuggler flag. You know this. The fact that we were killing everyone around MT with no French ports anywhere near there should have been evidence enough that we were just telling you the truth. What we really wanted was for you to come out and fight. Why didn't you? Camping Savannah knowing that the USA had no elite team of PvPers to come out and fight you was one thing. Camping MT knowing the Pirates have several elite teams of alleged PvPers was another thing. We thought we were taking a big risk and were going to get jumped by an elite force at any moment. We brought the water to the horse but we couldn't make him drink. This is why Teutonic's idea won't work either, I think: I cannot see BLACK or CCCP going for it. All they care about is dots. I cannot fathom why.

I always think it comes down to one simple thing: People are too afraid to PvP. And there's no reason for it. I think the game would be 100% more fun for everyone if they just followed the simple formula I have been shouting from the rooftops in every thread I can: 1) Build a fir/fir Surprise. 2) Put longs on it. 3) Put 1 speed mod on it -- admirality speed figurehead is fine. If you can get a 2nd speed mod great but don't sweat it. 4) Go hunt. (Ideally, get with at least 1 friend and go hunt.) 5) Once you have some experience in this, feel free to modify the above parameters. Try other ships. Try other guns. Try other woods. If you're ballsy, a Bellona is probably the best OW PvP ship but maybe get your feet wet (literally) with a few Surprises first. This is a simple and cheap plan and you can't tell me there's a veteran player who cannot afford to try this 10 times over. I think the Brits have done a great job exploring the possibilities of PvP and have really stepped up to the plate on this. I see Brits sinking people on the regular now and I didn't just a few weeks ago. A lot of people seem to raise PvP up to some nearly unattainable level of "oh you need these mods and all 5 slots unlocked and these ships with these rare woods" and none of that is true. I killed so many people in a storebought Surprise that was fir/crew space and eventually had to sell it to make dock space because nobody could sink the bloody thing. It's amazing what you can do (and what you can escape from) with just a few competent mates. I think even USA players have stepped up. I dunno exactly what they're doing but I see them sinking people now and it looked a lot more one-sided last month. The question in my mind is "why aren't still more people doing this". SOME pirate clans have stepped up to the plate and will fight like this. SOME Danish clans are fighting. But it seems a lot of big talkers are nowhere to be found on the open sea. We should be having tons of fun hunting for each other's PvPers on the open world. Why aren't more people doing this? And I do think there's a big game fault here in that RvR and PvP are so totally separated from each other but let's have some real talk: RvR is a drag on this game. There is so little fun to be had there and too many gimmicks that spoil it way too easily. PvP has some gimmicks and lame mechanics too but overall it's a much more available form of fun. I think a lot of people who quit would enjoy the game if they just did what I suggested above. We really just need more people doing that and the fun grows exponentially. Sitting back and grinding missions or only logging in for empty port battles is what kills clans.

The problem I see is "audience shift". PvP lovers quit in 2016 because it was too hard to find good PvP. Teleports... shipping from free port to free port... port capture mechanics making it extremely irritating to try and move up a front line to base out of... PvPers got frustrated and quit. SOME came back to try the patch 10 changes and I dare say we like them overall. There is still more to do but we like what patch 10 did. But you lost a lot of the non-PvPers who were upset at the changes. So the 2016 game lost the PvPers. The 2017 game lost the PvErs (and too few PvPers came back to try the new system). That leaves....not a lot of people. Still to do: RvR and PvP are disconnected. You can RvR while mostly avoiding PvP. And you can PvP while ignoring RvR. Somehow we need to get these systems to overlap more. "Contention grind" was supposed to do it but it still moves too fast. In a game where a fight can last 90 minutes and sailing around easily takes 30+ minutes, an organized group can completely take a port from 0 to 100% contention faster than a resistance can see this and organize to fight them. Pick an audience, focus the marketing on that audience and then advertise to them.

Yeah... In this game, what you do to flip a port and "the entire rest of the game" are too far separated from each other. You can RvR with very little need for PvP (especially once you are established) and vice versa -- PvPers do not need to care about or participate at all in RvR. This new clan conquest idea makes this even more true. Once this goes in, clans like mine can simply never join a war company and we will forever have all the resources and teleports we need for PvP. RvR game sounds like it might be literally invisible to us. How it SHOULD work is that port flipping occurs as a natural result of literally every other action in the game, but slowly over time. Trade profit generates contention. Sinking NPCs generates contention (but not so that it's worth it to "grind" but rather, it just slowly adds up as a result of people naturally getting some XP). Doing missions generates contention. All this happens to the nearest enemy port regardless of how far away that is. Brits engaging in normal activity in Belize will generate contention in Haiti if that's the nearest enemy port. They can't NOT generate contention. Everything you do is worth some, somewhere. Then maybe war supplies can be used by attackers to shift the time of the battle. Contention should be a natural event all players contribute to rather than a special gimmick we have to aim to do.

I don't see why that should be surprising. The one thing this game has always struggled with is a way to make people care about port ownership. With smuggler flags and alts, the ONLY value a port really has is as a teleport base. Need common shipbuilding materials? Home counties have the critical things you need like fir and iron. Need rare wood? Smuggler flag. Or an alt if you need to bid on it. Need saltpeter or other less common things? Alts. Pirates took Georgetown and don't use it. Literally has no value for them. From what I can see they don't even teleport to it. Why bother taking useless ports? Why should the British even want it back? "Realm pride" I guess but the county itself has very little real value. The last valuable French port was Haiti, which was a useful teleport base. Losing Dominica, for example, cost us nothing. Everything I needed that area for, I can still get. And I never teleported to it -- it's only a 10 minute sail from an invulnerable base. The other part of the equation is that the way BLACK plays and the way the French play are almost completely opposite styles. French style: Play a lot, sail all over, sink everything you see, ignore port battles. BLACK style: Play rarely, only for actions specifically related to a port battle, ignore open world PvP. We rarely kill each other because our styles don't overlap. Which I think is a fundamental problem in the game design: that you can have two different playstyles that almost never encounter each other. In my opinion, port battles need to create more open world PvP and vice versa. That we can ignore port battles and they can ignore open world PvP and we can both play just fine like this forever is, I think, a flaw in the game. If BLACK quit tomorrow it would make no difference to us. If we quit tomorrow it would make no difference to them. Our styles don't intersect.

Just for the record, the French clans all agreed we just don't care about port ownership anymore. We've all been living out of free ports anyway so while we could grind up all the Danish ports into contention for "Night Flip War 2: Revenge of Night Flip War" we just don't see the point. The real key to what's going on is the ship sink channel. We continue to ravage Danish and Pirate shipping -- mainly Danes as the pirates seem to have wandered off somewhere and left their allies for the wolves (French wolves).

I was thinking: what is a flag? tl;dr: I hope a flag is actually 100 war supplies. War supplies are not trivial to build. They involve a fair amount of acquiring materials and moving them around. (In fact, I think it would be interesting to raise the tonnage of materials required but lower the labor cost. More hauling = more open sea warfare potential.) Stopping a 30 minute flag plant is going to be impossible -- the flag runners had all day to plan this and get organized and could well be sailing to plant the flag with 25 1st rates. The defenders have probably 30-60 minutes to organize a response to that?? Not gonna happen. If flags cost money then there's not going to be a way to stop it. Owning ports will give you money which gives you flags which gives you more ports. But if they cost war supplies then it's a little more interesting: now there are traders moving around and that at least gives us a chance to hunt for something.

And I think this is going to get even worse in the upcoming clan war system, which is bringing back flags. Sitting for 30 minutes to plant a flag is a lot less time than was required to be on the OS grinding fleets, or acquiring the stuff for war supplies. Unless a "flag" is actually something like 100 war supplies, in which case we might be catching a lot of BLACK traders (or more likely, alts) on the open sea...

"Rookie zone" really implies they cannot be hunted and killed. "RvR rookie zone" where cities cannot be captured is meaningless except to the extent it supplies a nation with needed resources. Even then, the traders moving those resources can be sunk. So no. Getting your Trader Brig sunk by a Bellona means it's not really much of a rookie zone. It is a possible problem that has come up on occasion. It is not, by far, the biggest problem with port battles or why so few people engage in them.

What happened to BLACK, anyway? They left all the MT pirate clans swinging in the wind and now are doing the same to the Danes. I thought we'd see them boiling out to fight us on the open sea but with few exceptions, BLACK, BLOOD and SOB have been AWOL. We're sinking other pirates and lots and lots of Danes now but the big pirate conglomerate is nowhere to be found. Wondering if they've largely quit because they mainly wanted 25v25 port battles and nobody is giving it to them -- the Brits may not be capable of it anymore and the French aren't interested. (If so, it does serve them right. BLACK and friends were the ones who engaged in quite a lot of what I'd call "metagaming actions" leading up to port battles, which really seemed to be a sore point with the US clans and the Brit clans, judging by the forum posts back then. BLACK "won" by making all the other PB-interested parties so disgusted that they quit playing. Now all that's left are the people who love open sea PvP, which BLACK doesn't seem to enjoy, or even log in for. Maybe next time, rather than "win at all costs", just play the game normally so you don't run off all the people who like the same 25v25 gameplay you do? Just a thought. Extra credit funny: all the French ports, including the ones attacked by Pirates, were flipped in off hours. I'm sure this was done to "teach us a lesson". Problem is all it did was prove to the few remaining French who actually wanted port battles, that the whole system is broken and not worth bothering with anymore. They have either quit the game, joined the Danes or joined the rest of us in open world PvP raiding, finally agreeing that 25v25 PBs are a waste of time to even try to do. BLACK wanted 25v25 1st rate fights but everything they have done since the reset has driven off the very players they needed to stick around to give them that kind of fight. The rest of us do not care for it.)

This will not be enough. Remember in the old flag system there was also a window of opportunity which the defender could select. This was the only reason any flag ever got intercepted: we knew that in certain hours we had to be in the area and be ready in case there was a flag attempt. Adding 30 minutes to the placement in a game where travel time can be 2+ hours and any battle can run for 90 minutes and the window for the flag attack is 24/7 means flags will rarely, if ever, get intercepted. Only in really hot areas that have players all the time will there be any flag interception action. On PvP-Global it will just be night flags and night flips anyway.