Barhidious

Well I guess I better defend myself by telling my side of the story. I was outside ile a veche capturing trader ships, my first battle was against a trader brig, pickle, and brig. I joined in as did blindshot and 1 other person. That was fine, in the end I needed the help of the other guy to deal with the brig and not let the trader ship get away. Blindshot as far as I could tell did not assist in the sinking of the ships. What he did do is when I was boarding the trader ship about to take it, intentionally rammed me away from the ship and gave me boarding interrupted. He then immediately boarded it himself and took the prize. I didn't do anything about it beside say that it was a dick move. So when I started my next battle against a trader brig, start killing it, then with 30 seconds left on the timer blindshot joins again. Being annoyed the told him not to pursue. When he did I fired a few shots at his sails to try to deter him. When he finally did not I demasted him. I then took my prize. If it wasn't for the previous battle I would have left him be, even if that meant I lost the prize. But because the previous battle, he atleast looked like he knew exactly what he was doing by interrupting by boarding. I wasn't going to let him do it again, as I put forth all the work and get no reward. Unfortunately I have no proof for my case as I was not aware I would be on trail for it. That's how it happened from my point of view. If action needs to be taken as a result so be it, I acted as I saw fit. If blindshot really did not have the intentions to intentionally mess with me than I apologise.

Sort of a gamey approach to it, but it could help compensate and allow for allowing skilled players fight outnumbered. There could be a debuff applied to he vessels when they're fighting out numbered. It could be sort of justified by saying the men are cocky going into battle. It would have to be small, like 10% reload speed or something like that. But enough that could allow for skill to have an additional chance. The other option would be, as someone suggested disable a lot of visual guides people get. But that would make it a lot harder for new players, and really wouldn't make it more skill based. i think it would just make it more about memorization, or will make a lot of people turn to external programs to replicate what was already in game.

While I do agree that's just the way I've chosen to play, and i fully intend on pvping. Right now when you're grinding up there is no reason to leave safety. Which isn't a problem, it would just be good to have some sort of mechanic to encourage people to get out there. While the safety might change with higher population, I'm not conviced, part of it is because of the safe instances nature of missions. The other is there will be more players on every side. it will be even harder for small groups to attack people around capitals, and large groups will likely be noticed before they get close to creating problems for mission runners. So while it's fine to let people level up in relative safety, adding an option to get more exp while risking their own ships would encourage movement to opposing zones.

If it was made so it was 2x exp and gold when you're in territory thats reinforced by the enemy faction that it would give more reason to leave your own territory. My experience so far has been mostly just hanging out around port royal, and leveling up. I've seen no real reason to go to enemy territory other than for port battles. I think this would give a good risk/reward to move around the map more.