The Marinadtor

I have left the Capital area, but I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about the general population and especially the new players on PVE who are not part of a clan, who do not intend to play with people but just want to come on a couple of houres every other day to do some fighting. They will probably not stay in the game if they can't easily get their battles, and limiting the cancellation will make it harder for them to get their battles without adding something to fill that need.

Just to make it clear: all I am saying is that I believe that limiting the cancellation of missions will INCREASE the bleed of PVE server players, not that the game will gain millions of players simply by not doing anything.

I don't agree with the statement that the inverse will happen if you choose an other path in a binary choice. That would mean the game soley rests on one feature which I'm sure you agree is not true, this game is a system of features each interacting with other features and the games current lack of retention is down to many things(some more valid than others). As it stands now because missions are the only reliable way for most PVE players to get their fix out of the game, limiting it will limit the rentention of these players. If you limited missions but added something else to do for PVE'ers then that would be a different argument(maybe just increased the density of NPC fleets on the PVE server and not PVP server). Just taking away wont do anything for rentantion of players, but that might not be your goal I guess.

If you don't think the game is slowly dying I don't really think you have played the game for 3 years. I played the game when it first came out and came back late last year and noticed both a drop between the periods of my play and during the last 5 months.

You say that, and I can agree to a certain extent but it will not change that the in my opinion high probability that the player retention of the game will be worse and therefore will make the game less fun for all players because the servers will be slowly emptying.

Most new players on the PVE server thinks sailing to Savannah la Mar is a waste of time, I don't see this as an appropriate solution. In high population areas on the PVE server(KRP) there are virtually no OW NPC fleets left simply because of the high population density. That is why people go for missions on the PVE server, because they don't have the time or want to put in the effort to go somewhere where they can find more.

To add to this, I believe that the limitation on cancellation of missions will drive away people from the PVE server aswell simply because PVE players don't like to wait to get the action they want. If they at the end of the day have used their cancellations and now only have missions on the other side of Jamaica they will not do the 30 minute sail to get there, but simply go play something else. I also believe that this will make them less likely to come back a second time to play, to get addicted and then tell their friends to buy the game and more likely to leave the bad reviews complaining about the game being to grindy or hardcore that some people on this forum hate.

If you where talking about PVP then why did you say the change would not affect pacific(pve)?

The normal way to make people explore games are by making exploration rewarding, not by making playing the game more laborious and tedious.

Yes, people don't have to, but I think people will then rather just play something else. And I understand there are patterns to where to find NPC fleets, but from my view they are to few to reliably be a source of combat in high population areas like KPR, and therefore people play missions.

You stated that you didn't see how this change could negatively affect the PVE server. I stated that it probably will since most PVE players only like fighting and have to resort to missions to get their fix. If they have to sail for 30 minutes to get to a mission that is the equivalent of having to wait 30 minutes for matchmaking in another game, which I think most players simply wont do and therefore will leave this game to play something else. You then stated you liked sailing so the change doesn't matter. While it might be true to you it does not answer or counter my claims that player retention probably will be hurt because people don't want to wait to play. In other posts I've argued why I think it is bad from a PVP perspective, but with you the discussion is PVE only.

I agree that we look for games' experience differently, yes Well your argument is you play the game a certain way so if it caters to it then its good. My argument is that my understanding of what most PVE players want is hurt by this which would make it bad for alot of players, hurting the game in the long run by even worse player retention then currently. I don't see how your argument is valid in the context?

Well to me it seems like you might not have played as a British character on the PVE server in a while, but correct me if I am wrong. The fact of the matter is there are not enough NPC fleets around highly populated areas to allow you to get good balanced fights against NPC fleets reliably and thats why the missions are so important on the PVE server. If this was matchmaking people wouldn't sit around for up to 30 minutes for a match, they would most certainly just find another game to play.

I don't know how it works on the PVP server but on the PVE server they certainly close after you enter them. What I'm trying to get at is that the new added risk is the travel to and from the mission. And if you disregard the risk, as you would on the PVE server the potential longer travel to missions I think will make people not wait to get there but rather just go play another game.

Ok, so we agree then since you don't have a counter argument?

From reading this I can only assume you haven't really thought this through. On the PVE server there are two main areas of activity: crafting and trading, and fighting. Since alot of player don't fancy the non-combative activities they are left with fighting either OW AI fleets or doing missions. In the PVE server most players play as British and especially around KPR. That means that there is always a substantial lack on OW AI fleets for players to attack and they therefore have to resort to doing missions. If a player happen to be so unlucky that their mission is far away and they are out of cancellations, instead of effectively sit and wait on the "match" for 20 minutes of dull sailing they will go and play another game, simple as that. From what I can gather this will very probably hurt PVE player retention aswell as PVP player retention.

Well obviously I'm not advocating no missions. But I feel this change might be counter productive. If you want to have PVP you need captains comfortable with he controls, to get that you need missions that you can do safely without too big risks (like getting attacked by an experienced player on the way). This change I suspect will make it harder for you to get players to stick around long enough to consider going for the PVP. Anyhow I play mostly on the PVE server and this change only makes the game more tedious while giving nothing in reward in exchange. I think if the developers think this is a good thing to implement for PVP then why not treat the PVE server like a different server? They already do that with the admiralty.

So the purpose is to make people go out of the safe zones? Isn't the reason people do missions so they dont' have to worry about PVP? So new players can get a feel for the game without taking too big of a risk to sink with their maybe only ship due to lack of knowledge of the game. Why even have missions then if you only want to encourage PVP?

Is this a problem tho? How does the location of missions make the game more or less enjoyable? For those who like to sail they can cancel missions until they get one far away and those who don't can cancel missions until they get one close. Limiting this only forces playstyles on players. So my question then becomes how does it affect anyone else beside the mission taker where its NPC mission is located?

I think almost every change here is welcome and will make the game better or more interesting. I am however curios why a limit on mission cancellations will be added, what this change is meant to address?

The Labour Contracts you can buy 10 of for 150 Combat Marks on the PVE server that gives me 1 LC/15 CM. You get roughly 1 CM per every 10 000 gold in a battle(atleast on the PVE server). If you were to sell you CM for 10 000 gold each on the PVE server they would be all bought within the hour. Therefor the Labour Contracts are estimated as 150 000 gold. If I look now in KPR on the PVE server someone is trying to buy LC for 130 000 gold each(low balling) and people are trying to buy CM for 10 000 each.

It was a while since I did the prices, but if I remember correctly it is the price of harvesting one log or what have you(not including the LH) and for things like compass wood and woods that spawn the price is often an estimate of the median price you can find it for, adjusted so that the 4x price roughly reflects the cost of buying it in KPR, which on the PVE server is the main trading hub. The price estimate was never a main feature, more something I added to get a rough idea of acceptable prices for ships.

I've made a calculator for working out what materials you need to make, what resources you will need and a price estimate of ship construction. Click here for spreadsheet glory! I'm a PVE player so the prices might be different for you. If you intend to change anything except using the drop down boxes(like resource prices) please make your own copy of it by going under "File" and then pressing the "Make a copy" option. The spreadsheet is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license which basically means if you decide to copy it (and maybe make changes to it) and share it with people you still have to give appropriate credit to the original creators. A small note is that the calculation for Crew Space trim is currently wrong for the additional canvas rolls, I simply didn't realize that it changes with the trim but might fix it at a later date.