Alejandro

If what prevents hyperinflation to occur is the mere fact that we can "cheat" the risk by using teleporting merchant ships, then there might be a problem with traders to begin with. Teleportation shouldn't be a fix for too-long distances or too much risk. Also, I'd expect the devs to introduce larger merchantmen in the future. I doubt a traders' snow is the largest we'll see. But even then, 800 units of something costly is nothing to scoff at, as profits go.

Ah, the mention of the unwashed Steam masses; this forum's version of "we, blue-blooded aristocrats, do not meddle with the peasants". Has been happening for a week now.

I put up 20. Fine, make it 1500. Why would Seller A, who placed his bid five minutes before Seller B, be penalized with goods that won't sell for the day simply because he placed his bid five minutes prior? He's active, he should be able to undercut. Also, your argument is invalid. EVE, and many other sandbox games, have economies who work, despite people being able to undercut each other. You're also not considering the fees. It wouldn't necessarily lead to bidding wars until oblivion. It wouldn't simply lead to a normalization of prices across given areas. And yes, it'd reward people who are active. That's how sandbox games are supposed to be. Defending this system where we pay high tax upfront, can't take gold without removing the rest of the contract (laughable at best) and cannot do anything once somebody has undercut you but pray people will get to your wares or accept you've just lost 10% of your goods value is close to the definition of insanity, at least economy wise. My question to you is: do you even trade? I understand some of yall are used to an economy where there was as many ports as there was players active on the game, but we're in a different world now.

They shouldn't be. I haven't been hunting traders enough to comment on the chase itself, though, but I'd imagine some ships to be faster on the OW. That said, even if they somehow are, people shouldn't be allowed to simply transfer vast ammount of goods by teleporting every four hours. It completly removes one of the main aspect of a sandbox game (and, to me, the most interesting one, as PvP is definitely more interesting when there's something in play).

How are you reading it as the solution when it's not even something I breached in my OP? I literally didn't touch the taxation system at all. Also, it's definitely possible to have bidding wars at the moment, as there is no information about the quantity of goods sold at a given price. So if Seller A comes up and puts up 1600 Iron pieces at 50 a piece, Seller B can come and put up 20 at 49. Then Seller B can wait until Seller A - who has no idea how many goods were put up at 49 - decides to remove his current contract to relist at 48. Seller B then undercut him again. Or hell, I can simply put stacks of 20 non stop to undercut people. Somebody should be able to adjust/lower the price of what he wants to sell, since he has already paid taxes for it at a higher price anyway. If anything, that person is only reducing his own margin of profits. I don't understand what you don't understand here. I'm simply saying Seller A shouldn't be penalized because Seller B came right after him and put up goods for 1 gold lower. Like, how is this non-understandable or complicated to you? I don't get it. It's like you think we can't have bidding wars (which we already have, anyway) and that bidding wars would be terrible (they wouldn't, they would lower the prices and costs).

1)Essentially, you'll have bidding wars and people will benefit from lower prices, up until one side decides it's cutting too much into his profit margin. Essentially, capitalism? This is already happening, just with a clunky mechanism in place, one that doesn't make any sense whatsoever and penalizes the seller who comes in early. 2)Easy. You put the taxation on transactions. Somebody buys from my coal at 50 a piece. I put up 50 pieces and sell 10 pieces, so 500 gold. The tax is 10%. Right now, the current mechanism would have me pay a 250g tax. The logical step would be to put the taxes on the transactions. At 10%, when I come to take my gold, it'd give 450 gold and keep 50 gold as taxes. But that's not what I'm proposing in the OP. I'm proposing a simple bandaid on this broken, clunky and, frankly, unworkable system. Give us the option to take our gold once a sale has been made without removing our entire contract of goods AND give us the possibility to edit the price of our goods towards a lower price if we sell and a higher price if we buy. The economy benefits.

-P2P trade system works when we have a small population. Right now, it's more of a complement and certainly not meant to be the only trading option. Otherwise, you'll see port/nation chat flooded with "WTS 200 coal". I'm definitely not in favour of spam. -In real life, you don't pay upfront as a seller. Companies pay taxes after a fiscal year. Not before they actually put up goods for sale. Would you imagine GM paying taxes at full for the 2.5m cars produced this year, before even selling them? -I'm not opposed to the tax system. That's not what my suggestion is about. I'm actually asking to keep the tax as it is. You put up a contract, you pay for the taxes. -It doesn't make sense to be taxed twice for the same goods. We should be able to edit the prices in a contract to make them more competitive if somebody else comes by and lists stuff at a price lower than yours. You wouldn't make a company pay twice just because it decides to lower its prices to follow a nearby competitor. -We should be able to pick up gold from a sale at any point without it destroying the contract. Again, the system is highly unrealistic and nonsensical. A game shouldn't be made hard by how clunky and ineffective its UI and design are. EVE is still a hard, cutthroat game despite having a working trade system. By the way, as it stands, what we have is exactly what you described. Anybody is free to come behind me and list at a lower price than I did, even though at the moment I listed my wares, they were at a competitive price. I shouldn't be punished twice, first by not being able to sell my wares and second by having paid upfront a high sales tax. It simply doesn't make sense. Either make the contracts stick but put the tax after the sale is completed or allow us to adjust the contracts (as would be logical) and claim gold as it sells (provided you are in port).

Unrealistic and nonsensical. If the only trading system between players is to use contracts, contracts should have more options, especially ones that makes sense (like claiming the gold you got from your sales without removing the rest of your goods still on sale (and that you already paid for in taxes!)). As it is, the current contract system implies the use of a middleman. I tell him how much I want of an item or how much I'm willing to take for an item. The fact that I pay a sales tax upfront, before even selling items, is ridiculous. But let's agree to that part. Then, he should be amicable to reducing the value of my goods if I'm asking for it. After all, it's like paying 5 bucks in taxes for an item that you asked 50 bucks for. If you decide to ask 40 instead, you're cutting your profit margin and no one else's. I truly don't understand where you're coming from. This system is probably the most limited trade system I've ever seen across any MMO. I'm proposing a bandaid, at best. Stuff that just falls into common sense category.

As it is, there's only two options once you have placed a contract: to delete it and abandon the goods or to claim it back (take the gold and the goods). The problem is that, given that we pay a full sales tax before any item is actually sold (which is preposterous but we'll try to work around it), if somebody undercuts your contract, you're out of luck. You either have to hope that people buy that person's goods and then get to yours or you have to suck up the losses (because you paid the sales tax early), claim the contract (take your goods back) and relist them. I propose that we thus change the contract system from its current "two options" form to a more logical four options. 1)Delete the contract. (Delete contract, abandon goods). 2)Claim the contract. (Claims all the gold made so far and recover the goods you have not sold yet). 3)Claim the gold. (Claims the gold made from the sales so far.) 4)Edit the contract. (Set a new, lower price to your goods for sale. You've already been penalized by paying an higher sales tax once, there is no reason for you to be penalized twice. If somebody undercut you by placing a new contract, you should be able to undercut him again without placing a new contract and paying another time a high sales tax on goods you didn't even sell! I should be able to go see the auctioneer and tell him "hey, this is the new price I'd like to ask, thanks").

Ships, gold and the likes shouldn't be mirrored. Only XP and even then. The problem goes as follows: Say I'm one of the crafters of my clan. My clan is on the most populous server. But hey, I'm a crafter. I could simply set up shop on one of the less populous servers, run my goods without risk, do my commerce over there, make easy money and then use that money on the main server. Or say my clan is into port captures. Port captures can pay a lot. We decide to stomp on a small server, go after easy pickings, isolated ports. Make a fortune. Bring back that money on server 1. Those are but the first few, easily observable "exploits" one could do. I'm sure creative minds would find A LOT more. Servers should be separated or merged together whenever the infrastructure allows. Having mirrors is simply asking for a catastrophe.

Simple. Being able to get in your merchant ship and teleport it back to the capital with your goods in your hold is disruptive to commerce, favors a completly-safe approach to moving goods (just wait once every 4 hours to move your most precious cargo, if not all of it) and removes an interesting PvP element from the Open World. I'm all for the teleports to outposts but one shouldn't be able to teleport if one has goods in his hold. Period.

Would tend to agree. Repair mode should be repair mode. No firing and repairing.

Then either chase him, block his route, or demast him. As it stands, the current repair option isn't something that gives a second life anyway. It's a small repair. I don't see how a second repair would force people to back each other up more or less than they already do. Repairs are minimal and would fall under a cooldown anyway. What you'd have, though, is the possibility for someone who managed to escape from harm's way to maybe re-enter the fight as a damaged, but still effective fighter. Yall are acting like a second repair (or any repair) means a new life or a new fully repaired ship. Someone who goes in the middle of an enemy force will still be badly damaged and risk sinking. The only difference is that if he is able to escape and the enemy force doesn't finish him off, he might actually be able to come back 10 minutes later as a ship able to withstand a few more hits. Having one more repair doesn't make you think less. It forces your enemies to actually chase you a bit longer if they truly want to see you dead. People weren't thinking less when we had three repairs and more when we had zero. They just, for the most part, played more conservatively or sunk faster. Too conservative play gets boring. There isn't a whole lot of fun to be had firing potshots from a thousand yards away. Also, the extra repair would work with the same cooldown as urgent repair does. Managing repairs actually adds more complexity to the fight, not less. P.S: The goal of a suicide run is to die. It's to reset the instance so you can get into another as fast as possible, with a basic ship. Obviously, as we level up, it's less likely to happen.

Fairly straightforward. Right now, we have one ship repair, one sail repair and one "urgent repair" (eight minutes CD). My proposal would be to bring back an extra ship repair. It's already not particularly easy to demast someone, but major encounters would definitely be improved upon if one had at least an extra set of repairs (or if repairs worked the same way urgent repairs work, no limit, but with a CD of 8-10 minutes). It'd certainly make PvE fights a bit easier, but would add a bit more strategy to group fights. As it is, someone who gets too damaged (but no leaks/major problems) is essentially out of the rest of the fight, even if he can manage to keep his ship out of harm's way. Knowing XP and gold gain is based on damage dealt, a lot of players who find themselves badly damaged tend to go for one "last suicide run" instead of trying to stay alive and repair, which is nonsensical.

I liked "Society" from Pirates of the Burning Sea. Sounded right for the time. I'd suggest Company. Fleets and Squadrons seem very militaristic in nature. Companies did a bit of everything, even though their main focus was obviously commerce.

I'd rather have everything produced and bought by players than this weird, clunky, hybrid system. Use labour hours to chop wood if the place produces oak to get Oak Logs, mine the quarry for stone, etc.

As it is, it is too easy to make money without interacting with other players. It is also too easy to go around without the need to purchase ships, thereby reducing demand for crafted goods. I propose the following: 1)Greatly reduce the ammount of gold paid by "The Shop" (NPC) for ship improvements. Right now, I'd consider it the easiest way to make a small fortune. Just a blue quality reload magazine can easily fetch 20k. It's absurd and decreases the demand for ship improvements crafted by players. 2)Limit the number of ships that one can capture in a day. Three to five would be reasonable. Having too many decent quality ships easily available - up to third rates! - reduces the demand for crafted ships. 3)Adjust the values for raw goods. The difference between what The Shop asks and what it is willing to pay is generally too high. It also swings too fast. Bringing a hundred units of a relatively cheap raw material, material that is abundantly used in recipes, shouldn't create a big swing in value in The Shop. A minor one, sure, but not a dozen doublons. 4)Remove the presence of pre-made ships being for sale in The Shop. Leave Basic Cutters. I understand this is early access and the economy is recent (and wasn't used to several thousand players).

Same problem here. I rolled French. No trouble for about five minutes. I was able to see chat, interact with others, form a group. I deleted my character. Made another (different name) in another nation. I can't talk. I don't see any chat window updated. Friends see me on the water but we cannot interact with each other. I can't form a group, I don't receive group invites. I can't add people to my friends list, nor can they add me.

Would it be possible to augment the speed of ships (across the board) on the open world? I'm all for immersion, but watching your ship take 1h30 to go across 50-60% of the map is not fun, especially with very empty seas. The ships are beautiful, the graphics are gorgeous but one can only sail for so long before just going alt+tab and checking it every 15 minutes. Could we perhaps boost the speed by 50%? It'd still take a massive time to go from one point to another.

I could live with the latter. To be frank, my main point (hence the "especially" in the OP) was regarding view on the Open World. I don't want to see farther, just to have a higher FoV. It wouldn't affect battles.

I purposely said that I was asking for a bit of a higher zoom out, not for a full bird-eye camera. Using the immersion argument to justify one thing but allow another is a bit of a slippery slope. Fleets will be using teamspeak, not flags to communicate, for example.

It becomes largely impractical in massive fights (against players, obviously), especially with friendly fire on.

Don't know if it was suggested somewhere but it'd be nice if we could zoom out a bit more, both on the open world (especially on the OW actually) and in combat. Nothing too fancy or spectacular, just a bit higher.

Late to the party, it seems, but I've read most of the comments and I'll answer the original post directly. I will assume that most players know of PotBS (as it seems to be somewhat heavily referenced there). The gist of it, for players who never played that game, is that you had three phases to a port battle. 1)The contention period. Aggressors needed to put the port above a "10,000 contention points" barrier for a port battle to be scheduled. For contention points to happen, four mechanisms existed: killing NPCs of the port's nation in the vicinity of said port, killing players of the port's nation (again, close by), bringing "goods bundles" inside the port (both the aggressor and the defender could do that, with bundles being counted every hour) and having a group of aggressors voluntarily PvP flagged, sitting on the open sea close to the port (to represent a blockade). Every hour, the port's governor (a player) could spend a small amount of gold to reduce contention by 1,000 points. There was three levels of contention: at 3,000 points, a small red circle appeared on the map and meant players in that area could be attacked on sight, even if unflagged. At 6,000, the circle would double in size. At 10,000, a port battle was scheduled. 2)The Port Battle was scheduled three days later, with certain timezones being closed (to avoid PBs happening at 3:30 AM). Meanwhile, players on both sides had to get points for the battle. For that to happen, you essentially needed to either kill players or NPCs of that nation. 3)Port Battle invites went out a handful of minutes before the Port Battle itself. It was based on a lottery system based on points (every point gave you 1 ticket, so to speak). Once you accepted your invitation, you were sent to a lobby with your fellow captains. The place was a physical instance ingame where you could do last minute trades with other captains (mats for repairs, gunpowders, cannonballs, etc.) and your port battle leader could explain the gameplan. Both sides then went out on a relatively large map, from one of three possible exits (the more points your team had, the more exits were available to your side) and you battled the enemy fleet for 2 hours. It was a 24 vs 24 battle (cap), where the aggressors had to either decimate the 24 enemy captains or take the port. To take the port, one needed to destroy the port's defenses (took but a few cannon shots) and then wait (20? 30? don't remember exactly as I'm writing this) before the port itself was to open. The port was an avatar battle (no ships) where the 24 captains would face a lot of NPCs. The trick for the defenders is that they couldn't get in the port before that time was up either, to avoid having 24 defending captains simply sit in the port every time and have a sizable advantage. It was a system that worked well in practice, despite being slightly unrealistic. The main problems were well highlighted by the admin's OP. For the sake of this post, I am assuming that there will be map resets and map victories. 1)While being against grinding NPCs - a large number of them do evidently get very tedious - there perhaps could be a single type of NPCs one could kill/board/neuter once to get a small chance to get invited (sort of 1 point in the PotBS system). 2)Timezones are a problem, most assuredly, especially since this game's population seems to feature players from the west coast of North America all the way to the east coast of Russia and Australia. I don't think it'll be possible to satisfy everybody but efforts can definitely be made. 3)One way to combat night flipping could be to have a mechanism where the port must be put in contention and remain there for a duration of 12 hours before a port battle is scheduled. So if a port is put in contention at 3 AM, it'd need to simply be in contention (I don't know how the system would work, I can only refer to PotBS' points system) 12 hours later, at 3 PM. Practically, it could work so that you could bring up the points much higher than needed, to have a sort of "reserve" that the morning defenders would have to bring down. 4)Never played GW2, can't comment. 5)Agreed on the port loss idea. The main thing is that port losses must affect the economy in direct ways. A MMO like this one will only work if PvP, RvR and Economy are tied concepts, one affecting the other intimately. It's why EVE is still a success story even twelve years later. It's why PotBS was beloved by its veterans (despite FLS' best attempts at ruining the game). It's also why so many MMOs fail to get their playerbase really involved into all the aspects of the game. Definitely a must. Although the problem is then: if your attacking fleet is limited to smaller vessels - just like the defending fleet - you most definitely need to bring down the defending guns too. Or certain ports will largely be uncapturable. That's why I'd warn some of the most "realism" oriented players not to push too much for massive fort batteries and large gun defenses in general. The game has to be one of ships. Port vulnerabilityPort is only vulnerable during certain time slot Port can be freely attacked during that time slot The time slot is determined by the defending nation Once port is captured the attacker can change the time slot to a more convenient for them If you go with an idea like that - and it's not a bad idea - you could divide time slots into Day, Afternoons, Late Nights. Most ports could be flipped/put in contention during two time slots, key ports only during one. It'd give players from different timezones a chance to shine when they're most active and it'd put your nation's most important cities in a safer spot. However, I don't think the time slot should be determined by the defending nation (and even then, by who exactly? who's leading the nation?) and I don't think the attacker should be allowed to change the timeslot either. What I'd do, continuing my suggestion, is that once a port is conquered by another nation, its "can be attacked timeslot" becomes "all 3" to make it harder for conquering nations to hold vast areas and a large number of ports. I'd go with both. I'll explain. The physical travel option is pleasing at first glance, it gives the opportunity for much open-sea PvP, but it's also a double-edged sword. From my experience - arguably, it comes from another game but the concept is very similar - if you go with full physical, what you will end up with is a superior nation simply preventing another nation from even entering the port. Stragglers and ungrouped people will be hunted down by opportunistic pirates/other nations. Very quickly, should that happen more than a few times, you'll end up with entire nations not bothering to show up to port battle calls because they know they'll lose a lot if they go, even before the port battle itself has occured. I don't know the exact mechanisms that are planned should somebody be sunk but I doubt it is to let him go to the nearest port with his intact ship. I'd recommend a system where the defenders must be in their ship of choice but can be teleported inside the port's bay (or wherever the PB is going to take place) once they accept their invites. On the other hand, the attackers have to be within a certain radius of the port to actively accept an invite. That way it's on the attackers to assemble a fleet properly; it gives the defenders an advantage when it comes to ease of movement, you make sure port battles are contested and it gives the attackers the advantage of having a better composition. I'd say that it also gives opportunistic hunters a chance to then attack the extra-attackers who didn't get an invitation to the port battle and are now sitting ducks. I would go with an hybrid system, assuming port battles take a few days before they happen (a la PotBS, again). I'll assume a three day system. 1)Port is put in contention. Port Battle is scheduled. Anybody who has points (or something similar) is notified when they take a look at some "Upcoming Port Battles Journal" window. 2)If you sail by that port, your "Upcoming Port Battles Journal" window is updated. 3)Each nation's capital could have a sort of gazette that you could buy, letting you know about upcoming port battles and updating your journal. It'd act as very small money sink and a sort of small RP feature. 4)Twenty-four hours before a PB is set to happen, every captain's journal is updated with the time and date. It keeps a certain fog of war, brings some RP elements to it and rewards sailing and exploration. I don't know what will be your RvR system. If it's going to be points (obtainable how?) or something else. All I know is that you are opposed to NPC grinding determining who gets in or what. Here's what I'd suggest. It's by no means definitive or complete. I'll go with "points" as a generic system. 1)Have it so players can at least kill one NPC ship within a port's vicinity to get a few points. Sort of a last chance type of deal. Killing more NPCs wouldn't better his odds. Gives a chance to people who are late or broke. 2)Have it so killing other players of the port's nations give points. Doesn't matter where, as long as X losses (aka the value of an average enemy ship) is sunk during the battle. Rewards PvPers. Should be considered the best option. 3)Have it so you can do some quest or another to get a few points. Delivering guns and powder from A to B (B being close to the port), a message to the admiral, etc. Gives a safer option to the less intrepid. 4)Have it so you can spend money to get a few points. When you enter the port, you could take contact with some kind of saboteur, a NPC. A one time only deal. Another relatively safe and lazy option. Also acts as a money sink. 5)I'd also have it so if you decline a port battle invite, those points are transfered to overall points that you can use anywhere. Rewards general activity. And, the most important; 6)I'd have it that if you participate in a port battle, your ship must spend 24 hours out of combat, in a harbour, repairing. You can participate in another port battle on that same day but not with that same ship. It's a measure meant to avoid seeing the same captains run all the port battles of their nation. That way, nations with large numbers aren't necessarily at a disadvantage when it comes to port battles (large numbers means a higher percentage of inexperienced captains has a chance to go to PBs). They can force many PBs to happen in a single day and outnumber their enemies with quality ships over and over while theirs are being repaired. It forces small nations to pick their fights carefully.

Alejandro Viran reporting here. Hello, ladies.