Tryaz

I agree with you mostly: except I don't think that sinking an AI enemy in a mission takes skill. I'd also like to see OW sailing made less afk and have made several suggestions along those lines - Make OW wind more interesting! Ship’s Log & other OW Navigational Tools What do you think to this suggestion of mine as a way to reward players who branch out from their regional capital? (see below)

Sounds easier. Less immersive and also makes less sense to me. Surely it's the voyage that you'd learn from, not rocking up to a new port. I see where you're coming from and that's quite a hurdle to overcome. I've played 150+ hours so far on NA and the problem I have with the current xp system is that it encourages players to stay in one place. If my goal is to advance in rank then my best bet is to pick two or three close ports and pull missions from only those. As all ports give the same missions and rewards I'm discouraged from going further afield. It also seems unfair that if I want to explore, trade or do OW pvp I have to surrender progression almost entirely. What if successive missions from the same ports had declining rewards? That would at least encourage players to move around. Perhaps the first mission each month from a new port could have a MUCH higher reward.

At the moment , travel time is dead time. I propose that you should gain experience for travelling across the map. However, you should not get experience for sailing through the same areas over and over. If the map were discreetly divided into grid squares, then you could gain experience for travelling through a new grid square but not for one you've already visited (this could be reset perhaps once a week). This means that if you're just running missions in an area (e.g. Jamaica) you're not gaining much travel xp. I think we need to reward players for striking out and exploring new seas. It also seems unfair that traders, who sail vast distances to source goods, are not rewarded with xp for their time.

Well I don't know about everyone else in this thread but I'm really satisfied with the changes from the most recent patch 9.63 I like that missions are locked to those outside your group. Great change, it preserves the feel of being on Navy business when other randoms can't interfere. I like that this wasn't applied to traders and other engagements preserving the privateer feel of those fights. I'd be interested to know the dev's views on stealing the capture of a trader from an ally. Are they any different to their feelings on stealing a capture from an ally in a mission? I continue to have great collaborative experiences with other players (all strangers) in this wonderful sandbox game. I've just closed the client after a great [trader, trader, brig] engagement where friendlies came in to help. I chained the brig as i passed to let the cutters catch up to it and went in pursuit of the two traders. Called a friendly Navy Brig downwind to help with the captures. I dismasted one trader and resumed pursuit of the second - asking the friendly Navy Brig to capture the first. After both traders were captured I'd made some profit and two new friends who I'm sure I'll sail with again. Disclaimer: no griefing took place in this engagement which I began alone. All parties left satisfied and richer, without animosity. No tears were shed because we're all adults here. Traders WERE hurt in the making of this anecdote.

Thank you! This is awesome

Dude stop talking about roleplaying and pirates in the same breath as banning players. This is a mechanical issue. Do a thought experiment for me and imagine that some mechanic which you wanted to use because it was authentic and used by Navy ships of the day annoys another player and so: YOU GET BANNED!? Banning players is not funny. Ban people for harassment, sure; for foul and offensive language; for making use of exploits and for hacking! But for using a mechanic in a way that other players don't like? You're just being unreasonable. ALSO: you're straight up inventing all this "back in the day" rubbish. I know you're not an historian or even a dedicated enthusiast. You're just using yours and others un-researched assumptions about the period to advance your cause.

I'm glad we agree that banning is too much. Turning people Pirate if they steal others captures sounds like a great idea, I'd like that as a fix. How do you police it though? Let's not start talking about the "rules" of the British Navy in the early 19th c. Because this game doesn't accurately model them and this discussion has little to do with them. I am ALL in favour of mechanics that heighten immersion and encourage roleplay. Being part of the British Navy and wanting to roleplay has nothing to do with being annoyed that someone took your trader brig. Did you have orders to interdict enemy trade or run enforcement for customs? No.

That would definitely be immersive. Captains of the highest rank invited to attend or something??? Like the real court's martial system. I'm in favour in principle but I'd have to know more

The latest patch 9.63 has a HUGE effect on this topic. Only group members can enter your mission!!!!! Problem nearly solved! I still would like to know where the rules are...

Okay, cool. I could get on board with the idea of players being made pirate. I doubt that the devs have the resources to be holding "court sessions" but I don't know, we'd have to hear from them. Now we need a mechanic that can reliably assess when someone is "stealing" and not simply being bad at helping.

Lol! Check out this guy! He calls bs and then goes right on to spout a mountain of his own. Your comparison makes NO sense. If life is a sandbox in the same way that NA is a sandbox then: the devs intervene to ban rammers and what: God intervenes to punish people who hit and kill others? Fine, I suppose?????? But I've got no interest in playing a game called Naval Divine Retribution

Ok so once again I'm troubled by an official response on this thread. Nevermind though, the game's creators have the right to draw the line wherever they see fit. Henry can you PLEASE point me to these rules that people keep referring to, I don't know where to find them. Just so you know, my response to your current handling of this is simply going to be to NEVER enter a stranger's battle. And so the sandbox shrinks

This is the same response that I and other measured players are advocating. I sincerely hope that the devs choose this path.

WOAH, you just stepped off the reservation. So you're advocating banning ONLY in the case of Basic Cutter swarm griefing? That's a different argument to the one proposed by the OP. Not that I've EVER seen one yet myself but I agree that a swarm of Basic Cutters has the taste of an exploit. Although it's besides the point of this thread - since you raised it - my suggestion would be to disallow captains from buying a Basic Cutter if they have another vessel in port. That makes it less easy to simply rage-pull infinite Basic Cutters. Back to the problem at hand. The voices speaking out loudly against this are mostly trying to emphasise the danger of the dev team pursuing this course of action with regards to griefers. I imagine many of them are experienced gamers who have first-hand or anecdotal experience of other MMOs that have been destroyed by this kind of ill-considered disciplinary action. So no I don't think it's reasonable to tell them to get a grip. As I see it, if these bans are enacted it will be a serious threat to the health of the sandbox and the community in NA. Although I am not one, griefers have their place in a sand-box.

In reality, ships not only grappled one another but lashed their spars together to ensure that they didn't drift apart. It would be possible to ram one ship away from another but you'd almost certainly damage the rigging of one or both ships. I wouldn't object to rigging shock occurring when you're disengaged by a ram but I don't think that's the issue being debated here.

Wow so this IS the official position? Very troubling. It seems you're electing for a hard role-play stance (and not even one with any particularly strong grounding in fact, there are any number of ways to recreate the RL rules of engagment or articles of war in gameplay mechanics). Are you totally averse to allowing players to lock their engagements if they're certain that they don't want help? I'm afraid my gameplay response to this, frankly idiotic, handling of the situation will simply be NEVER to enter a random ally's engagement. At the moment my practise has been to enter the engagement if it's not out of my way and tell my ally that they are calling the shots and: "is there anything I can do to help?" If they tell me that they don't want my help I simply leave the engagement and go about my business. I have never yet rammed anyone off a boarding, to either save them or grief them. I only observed this mechanic in practise for the first time yesterday and it was my favourite gameplay moment to-date. Now I learn it is to be nullified? If you will pursue this course of action then it's simply never worth the risk of entering a stranger's engagement as you have no control over what they take offense at and no way to protect yourself if they go, crying and butthurt, to the admins.

Woo-hooo PVP One EU now has ping. I need PVP 3 EU Mirror to have ping though

Same. Except only NOW have the servers gone to Maintenance status. I can see ping for the US servers now but I'm EU and neither of the EU servers are displaying a Ping value

Yep! I don't see how being able to reject your ally's help in the battle would be a bad thing. It's not immersion breaking either. Let's please just do that and not touch good game mechanics. Then if you still are "griefed" it'll only be by people in your group and you can just elect not to sail with them: simple. PS, where are these rules that people keep alluding to?

Ratline has the sense of it. I come from six years of EVE: a game famous for its encouragement of griefing. In six years I have NEVER griefed another player but I value the ability of players to freely use game mechanics as they see fit without the out-of-game whining of others resulting in a ban. I personally love the mechanic of ramming to disengage boarding. It has both good and griefing potential and I think it would be incredibly sad to see the game patched to somehow remove the mechanic. I hope against hope that the devs do not come down on the wrong side of the fence on this issue: it would set a dangerous precedent and bode ill for the future of this wonderful game.

Do you suggest that when an ally takes over another's boarding he is, in roleplay, stealing? Surely not. In reality any national ship PRESENT at the action would have shared in the prize, regardless of who actually undertook the boarding. That one's allies don't share directly in your prizes is a fault of the loot mechanics and nothing to do with gameplay surrounding boarding or ramming. No, I take your point but it does not apply well to the issue. I would welcome a change in loot mechanics to better consider allies. I think that the best solution to THIS problem is to allow players to lock their encounters to allies who aren't in their group. That would stop all the whining.

Where are these rules? I'm want to make sure I understand them if arbitrary elements of legitimate gameplay can result in a ban.

I STRONGLY disapprove of banning for this act. I have not yet been guilty of it myself but I detest the idea of players being banned for this. If this is the kind of policy that NA devs are going to pursue then I will be made to think hard about how much I want to commit to this game. Surely the best and most reasonable fix for this is to allow people to lock their missions and NPC encounters to prevent "friendly" players from ""assisting"" Again: I think handing out bans for this use of game mechanics would be EXTREMELY FOOLISH

I agree EXCEPT! A trading vessel is built with a certain weight of cargo in mind. If anything it would be harder to handle when sailing empty. I wouldn't mind seeing a FULL vessel sail somewhat slower but I'd object to making an empty trading vessel sail fastest - for reasons of realism

I've been watching my wind gauge when OW sailing for a while now and as far as I can tell the wind only EVER backs (moves anti-clockwise)!!!! It backs at a constant rate I'd like to see the wind in OW veer sometimes and not to change direction at such a predictable rate.