Archaos

You have to look at the whole reason why a nation would open their port to all, and that would be to get more trade and consequently more tax income. The downside is it attracts people who prey on your traders and use the port as a base to attack other territories. A simple solution would be to not allow warships to use these ports.

The idea is for the port owner to source the goods and then hand them in at the port rather than the maintenance fee that is automatically deducted at present. How they get the goods is up to them, they can set up buy orders that traders can fill or they can source the goods themselves and ship them on their own clan traders. The price would then be set by supply and demand.

It would not have to be player made resources, it could be certain trade goods that are required. The main idea is to create some activity on the map transporting these goods to ports for their upkeep just as would have been done in real life. The more people you have at sea hauling goods the more targets you have for raiders and consequently a greater need to defend the traders, all helping to create more PvP. At the moment if you own a port you do not have to even go to the port to pay the maintenance, you can earn the gold doing easy PvE missions and as long as you have enough gold in your guild bank the maintenance gets paid. Bringing in more port management would create some more content for the game.

A simple solution would be to allow you take any level mission but you do not get any xp or rewards if you are too high level or ship for the mission. That way you could test out a ship against lower missions and it would not be a money generator.

The current system of Port maintenance fees misses a huge opportunity to increase traffic on the seas and create a better economy. At the moment you just pay a certain amount of gold per week depending on the port and how it is set up, this gold can be earned anywhere and you do not even have to deliver it to the port to pay it. What if that maintenance cost was changed to trade goods that needed to be supplied to the port weekly, e.g. so much iron and wood for repairs, foodstuffs to feed the populace and gold and silver coins to pay the garrison. The overall cost per week could be the same based on basic prices of the goods, but it would generate a requirement for traders to haul the goods to the port and the port owner would actually have to do some port management to ensure they had sufficient supplies weekly, ans enemies could try and affect the port by blockading. Each port could have an indicator as to how many supplies they were lacking so people could know what the likely demand would be especially towards the end of a week.

Maybe national freetowns should only be open to trading vessels. I would doubt that any nation would allow a non-friendly nation Park a fleet of warships in their port.

There are so many small ports in the game that are not strategic ports, I would think it would be easy to make some of these ports smaller port battles not requiring 25v25.

What they really need to do is bring in a reason to trade rather than just trade for profit to fund PvP. There should be a requirement for certain goods in certain ports and there should be consequences for not meeting that demand. That way it generates a reason to ship goods to that port while at the same time creating a supply and demand which will affect prices and hence create higher profit margins. The current system just relies on you finding a trade item with a good profit margin and then shipping as much of it as possible at a time you are least likely to be intercepted. If it gets to dangerous you stop that route and move to another safer trade route. If there is supply and demand created at particular ports then people would have no option than to try and supply that port and if it was more dangerous then the price would rise to compensate for that danger. For example, make ports require certain items weekly for port maintenance, if the maintenance is not met then there is a consequence for the port, maybe something like it is easier to raise hostility or one of the forts becomes inactive. Make trading a game in itself rather than just a way to make money.

This bug was great when I was on my trading alt

That is so easily solved, make missions in the safe zone only give XP and gold for the first 2 or 3 ranks after that you can do missions to any level but you do not get XP or gold. That way people can train using bigger ships but not farm XP and gold. The same can apply to AI fleets passing through the area, they give no XP, gold or loot over a certain rank.

I had a problem with my alt yesterday where he suddenly started doing silly speeds as if he had just come out of battle. I did notice at times that he would appear outside a port he had just been to even though he had left that port and was half way to the next. I could target him but could not attack as we are same nation. I wonder if this is a similar bug and that he appears there even though he is no longer there.

This would be open to so much trolling and ganking. You find a wreck with something good inside (these are few and far between now), you open it up just to get people excited and they start heading there, then you take the stuff yourself, leaving them with a wasted journey. Or you dont have enough space to take the loot so you open it up and set a trap, someone comes to loot it, you let them loot it then jump them capture their ship and the loot and sail it home.

Why not take it a step further and do arranged port battles in a non-important region and instead of the usual port battle ships set a mixed group, just to show that mixed port battles could be fun.

I was doing a trade run on my alt on my laptop while playing on my main on my main computer when I noticed my alts speed was erratic and the sails were going up and down. Speed was still normal but fluctuating with the sails raising and lowering. I was sailing between Pedro Cay and KPR so I sailed my main out to observe while I tried to figure out what was happening. When my main had my alt in sight the alt suddenly disappeared although was still online on my laptop. I logged the alt out and then back in again and he appeared on my mains screen, I then proceeded to escort him into KPR but all of a sudden he appeared to stop although on my laptop he was still going. Next he started to move at speed of around 40kts but not visible to my main. I thought it must just be a lag spike, but it carried on at good speed all the way into KPR. I traded the goods I had then left KPR and again the speed was around 40kts almost directly into the wind as if I had the invisibility speed boost (I think I also had an invisibility timer) Since then it has slowed down to normal and speeded up randomly at one stage doing 30kts directly into the wind. Not sure whats happening I did F11 it but not sure how much info is shown in that report.

I think this is the way to go, give some basic training missions to let people get used to ship handling and aiming while slowly increasing difficulty before throwing them out in the open world. I dont think you should be able to get to rank 3 or 4 with it, because that will leave them unprepared for the realities in open world. You can give them a choice in OW to remain in a safe area for a few ranks but provide more encouragement to explore outside the safe area.

That is where most PvP games fail, the PvP'ers prefer to prey on PvE'ers rather than face other like minded people. If these people dont want PvP at the time and it is forced on them then they leave the game so in the end you still dont get your easy prey. Just let them do their PvE as long as it does not have a big impact on the economy or other aspects of the game, and then encourage them to dip their toe in the PvP waters. If these people are on another server then there is no chance of them trying PvP.

This post right here shows what the biggest problem in the game is. Please dont take this personally as it is not just BLACK or Pirates as I have seen the same in many clans and nations. The game becomes about the winning not the taking part. It becomes more than a game it becomes winning at all costs. It is quite clear from the post that this was all planned and well organised and I would have to say well done your plan worked and you have become the big dogs on the server. The problem is now that you are in that position there appears to be some sort of vanity or entitlement. You seem to feel that decisions made by the Devs were done directly against you because people moaned. You made a plan in the start to sit back and build up in preparation for this, you ground out your ship slots and prepared to unleash your attack. But dont you see it has become all about the winning not about enjoying the game. Even your attitude to the French bringing the battle to your doorstep, you state that you are not ready yet to face them but soon you will have got all slots unlocked so you will be unbeatable. Its not as if the French are attacking you in ships that have all slots unlocked. Your reaction to the French having the temerity to flip one of your regions speaks volumes, its sort of "how dare they play the game". People say they are always looking for PvP in the game yet you hold back until you know you can win once you have all slots unlocked. This is the biggest failing of PvP in most games, people only PvP when they know they can win. You claim people are out to get you nerfed, but what is actually happening is the same as would happen to any other dominant nation in the game, people will complain about any slight tactic you use for your advantage. Look at when the Brits were seen as the dominant nation, all the complaints about them and how they had it easy due to the population size, they were accused of not creating content for others etc. It may seem I am picking on BLACK but I am not, the reason I raise it is that this post makes it quite obvious. I saw the same on PvP1 with SORRY, also with the Danes pre-wipe where they felt it was their god given right to be able to enter port battles because thats where they were strongest. Look at the Swedes on EU at the moment, they are strong because they hand picked members after the wipe with the sole intent of becoming dominant on the server. I think people need to step back at times and look at what they really want out of the game, is it to be so powerful that you can crush all opposition or do you want to have fun PvP win or lose. Because at the end of the day that is what will make the server a success or failure.

I guess the problem is proving that people have cheated. XP would not be so much of an issue but gold farming would be. I dont think they have the manpower to investigate the number of cases that would arise.

I never understand why people get worked up about others doing this. The people that do this are not looking for PvP they are looking to do PvE. If you force them to go out to an area that they could get jumped in their mission then they get upset when it does happen. All that achieves is chase them from the game. You have to encourage people to go out and PvP not force them to do it. Making people that want to PvE go out so they are targets for PvP'ers is not the way the game should be going. Make the rewards better for PvP or give some other encouragement for people to risk PvP. I personally think all the capital regions should be non-PvP zones where new players can learn the game and do missions in peace for the first 3 or 4 ranks. Missions higher than that should not give XP or rewards, so people can use them for practice but not be able to farm them.

Have'nt you learned yet, people do not come here for reasonable debate.

I can agree with tweaks and minor changes when the system is close on working, but RvR at the moment is far from working and is actually driving people away. They got rid of alliances for a reason which most agreed was right, yet you want them to reintroduce them, You may as well just have 2 nations in the game for people to choose from. Alliances if they are reintroduced need to be dynamic and constantly changing rather than the static alliances we had before.

What you are asking for here is things to stay basically the same as they are now, just with a few more regions. They have said they want to make the small nations hardmode yet you want alliances so they are no longer hardmode and they can join a big block. Personally I think they have started to water down their original suggestions too much rather than trying to use the opportunity to bring in some serious changes to RvR. The need to remove regions from RvR and allow individual ports to make port battles more dynamic and not so critical. At the same time not keep every port battle as a 25v25 but let there be smaller battles for some ports. Make it easy to join in RvR.

People will come back if they get the game mechanics right and people start enjoying the game more. Like every game you get an influx of players (usually returners) who appear just after a major patch. They play for a while and then leave again if it does not hold their attention. The same will happen again with the new proposed RvR mechanics and that is why I feel they have to get them right to keep the players this time. I can understand your reasoning behind a smaller or fictional map but I think that too would drive away a certain portion of the player base who enjoy the historical setting of the game.

I actually liked the idea of War Companies, I just see this loose grouping of clans as similar to the way we already play with organizing the defense just before the battle with last minute friend agreements, whereas with a War Company you had more identity which could be further developed later with the introduction of company flags/banners etc.

I did post a thread in suggestions that had a more detailed suggestion for ports where ports started neutral at level 1 and once captured had to be built up with buildings, docks, fortifications etc all which required basic resources. As the buildings got built the port would level up to a maximum level and tied into that was trade resources weekly to maintain the port or it would de-level. Just a way to ensure that port owners did not just capture and forget a port set the tax rate and collect the money. Make the owner have to ensure the port is maintained. The higher the port level the bigger the port battle e.g. a level 1 port may only need a 5v5 battle while a level 10 port would be a full 25v25 with varying battles in between. I thought it would add more interest in the ports and create more OW traffic with traders transporting goods.