[Solo pvp zone suggestion]

The PvE server could in the end become what will make this game famous, dispite the devs efforts to make the PvP part as hardcore as possible. I see 170+- player ons PvE, this was never more than 50 before. Don't know how many ppl are on PvP atm. 

Add a feature where you can accept or decline PvP battles in OW no matter where on the PvE servers. Make group battles possible. Maybe even portbattles without ever losing ports, just for fun, or practice for the PvP clans. There would be no need for NA Legends. 

 

[Practice Rooms]

I agree on all of this, but I if I'm not mistaken, then they said that they removed it cause it drew away PvP from the OW (people would organise big battles in there, was good fun tho).
They created the concept of NA Legends for the people who wanted arcade style arena fights that were balanced. 

I hope they add a practice room, but I have little hope for it. 
 

[Cannot progress on War server]

58 minutes ago, Sovereign said:

Yeah, but if you learned how to sail on PvE you can do the exams on PvP and get the M&C rank + some goodies in like 1-2 hours. I'd argue this is good enough to get a new player started. I see your point tho.

I would like to have some lake like Guacata exclusively for new players with only a few free ports or something similar like a tutorial zone but that is probably nowhere near the priorities at the moment.

I think in the end all we'll be able to do is just help new players, do some missions together. thats probably the easiest. Just make some advertising in national chat. 

[Cannot progress on War server]

1 hour ago, Baptiste Gallouédec said:

And at last, give fleet 1 to everyone, it's stupid for new players to win a fight vs an ai trader and not being able to bring back the cargo to get some money without sinking their own warship.

 

Thats a perfect example of something a new player wouln't immediatly understand, and he will have lost allot of coins before he gets that. Altho, he will get the XP instead. But he won't have the option if he wished to use it. 

[Cannot progress on War server]

1 minute ago, Sovereign said:

I really wish it would be possible for everyone to grasp this simple truth but apparently some do struggle with understanding it. You can even start playing on the Peace server and then move onto the War server after you learned how to sail etc. ( if you want PvP but think the start is too rough ) .

Its easy to rank in PvE, but people won't bother ranking in PvE to do it all over again in PvP.

It just needs to be clear from the beginning what new players are getting into, so they don't complain afterwards. It has a steep learning curve, and it'll probably take a long time untill the player will be more or less satisfied with his own performance. The nations and clans should be encouraged to take in new members. Maybe give clans a small fee if they recruit players who've never joined a clan before, or give a small reward when a player in their clan ranks up (even if its just like 10 rig, 10 hull and 25 rum) might be enough for that extra effort.

[Cannot progress on War server]

@admin It doesn't need the masses, and it'll never reach the masses. Its just that the game seems to be increasingly easier as you rank up.

Its probably a good idea to state this in your game presentation somewhere, so people know its not for the faint hearted. The 7th and 6th rates are the hardest to rank up, nearly no OW targets, and traders are almost equaly gunned. It might be difficult for a new player to see that its "smooth sailing" when you reach propper 5th rate ships. As traders are easy peasy to cap, and the OW targets are less of a challenge as you rank up. 

I haven't played the tutorial in a long time, and don't know what other stuff is teached and told. I think it would be a good thing to take in consideration.
I think none of us are saying this for our direct benefit, we just want more players and want them to stick around so we can all have more fun. 

[First Rates should become rare and very expensive = maintenance, baby!]

These SoL's being too widely available is an issue that has been discussed and many stuff has been tried in the past to limit their availability, (remember the Compass wood and fine woods). The truth is whatever you do the top nations/clans will always be able to field large numbers of SoL's. Whatever you will have them do to get one, they'll get them. In my opinion it has an adverse effect on gameplay.

It will be an everlasting armsrace between nations to get 1st rates out and it'll wear players out, it'll be more grinding more time doing stuff they don't want doing. And it'll make long last players quit. Even for newer players the 1st rates must be somehow reasonably achievable. I think if they would be any more difficult to come by I wouldn't have bought this game in the first place.

Limiting numbes per clan or nation, will cause frustration within a clan or within a nation, who gets the 1st rates? Not the smaller clans, not the average captain, they'll go to the top clans and even the top players within those clans. 

However I do understand that it takes part of the magic away if you only see SoL's.

Why not limit the amount of SoL's that can be owned by one person, one 1st rate, one 2nd rate two 3rd rates? And you pay for the extra ships you have, so you can still cap them but it'll be costly to keep them. People will be carefull with their SoL's then, while they can keep producing them and maybe hand them out to other players who have free slots. Fiddle around with labour hours, so contracts are less easy to come by, or limit the amount of contracts that can be used to 4 a day? Otherwise you can stack LH contracts, and just stack all resources etc, and just keep pumping out a new one whenever you need one. Would be fair, and new players who are less clan oriented can still have one if they want, which I think is a big deal.

 

[Community Representatives.]

I agree with what @vazco said, it should definitely be someone who makes this game better, they have the right mindset for this. @rediii is certainly a good candidate. 

It would also be best to have someone who more or less agrees with the direction this game is going, there is no point in having someone represent the community who wants to rewind half of the features.

It might be a good idea to have someone give feedback from the PvE server too, its not a popular server but they're also a community and I think there is a market for the PvE part of this game for sure, so might be worth taking in accoun their opinions.

[Poll: Port battle limitations - formerly known as port battle diversity.]

9 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

My opinion about clans decreasing BR for PB.

The max should be 20% for lineship PB, 15% for frigates PB, 10% for shallow water.

The number of 25vs25 players should remain. We cant afford to loose epic battles with lots of ships, even they have low BR.

Would even take less, it should be a marginal gain, if its too much it'll be used every time without exception in any PB that matters.

[Poll: Port battle limitations - formerly known as port battle diversity.]

1 minute ago, George Washington said:

If you start stretching BR on 1st rates you will open up huge gaps that still need to be filled with ships. 

I think they could easily up the 2nd rates a bit, a buc is only slightly worse than a Vic, still the BR difference is 150. While a bellona and a buc are only 50 apart. They could ad 50 to each of the 1st rates.

Make like Vic 650, ocean 675, santi 700, and than we have a buc at 550 and pavel at 500. Bellona stays 400. Which looks like a better spread looking at the stats.

Would also raise the Wasa to 325 for obvious reasons.

 

[Poll: Port battle limitations - formerly known as port battle diversity.]

1 hour ago, rediii said:

If BR makes it more logicalnto take 1st rates but less instead of 3rd rates its a fault of BR values.

BR should determine how effective a ship is in battle as good as possible so it would be almost the same if you take 1 high BR ship or 2 lower BR ships.

 

since you cant balance out ships (historical etc.) you have to balance it with BR value first and as soon as something good is found you can balance craftingeffort/cm cost according to BR.

 

In the end BR is the thing that is important here.

 

Also you guys have to keep screeningfleets in mind. stop looking for short time mechanics and think about how your BR value would work with 1500 players on the server. A portbattlefleet with 4000 BR approaching a portbattle is dead meat then

I agree that BR should be like that, but there is a difference in 1 ship vs 2 lower BR ship, and 10 ships vs 20 lower BR ships.  The flaws of 1st rates is less played out when they are in group.

 

 

 

[Poll: Port battle limitations - formerly known as port battle diversity.]

First I thought it would be better to only limit by BR, but I have a strong feeling that it'll just end up being the max amount of 1st rates vs the max amount of 1st rates for that BR.

If the BR allows you to field 15 first rates, its going to be hard to beat by any composed fleet that is not 15 first rates. Also historicaly I believe 3rd rates were the bulk of a lineship fleet, and there were only few 1st and 2nd rates.

Maybe we should just say that the total BR of 1st and 2nd rates combined, can not be bigger than the BR rating of 3rd rates and below combined?

For 10.000 BR this could be:

6 x 1st rate (santi) (3900br)

2 x 2nd rate (900br)

10 x 3rd rate (bellona) (4000br)

4 x 4th rate  (1000br)

200 br left to spend on 5th rate and MB.

This could be for lineship battles, when it comes to 4th rate battles the BR difference between a cerb and a wasa is only 150br, which is the same BR difference as between a buc and a vic. But a buc vs a vic stands a good chance, but a cerb vs a wasa stands as good as non in a port battle.

Would remove the 4th rate and lineship battles and only do shallow and deep water battles.

When it comes to BR however, we'll need to do some fine tuning on the BR rating of some ships. Like the Wasa, and the BR rating of the 2nd rates in relation to the 1st rates, specialy the Buc.

[Several nations send colonial fleets to West Indies.]

5 minutes ago, Landsman said:

Pretty much this. @admin Towing should probably take some time tho... i don't feel like instant is a good idea.

Well, my opinion is that with the current conquest stuff its not that bad to have it done instantly.

We are having a ton of PB's each day, and you basicaly need to log in to know what is going down the day after. So you can sorta "organise" your ships and stuff optimaly the day before, and you know when to log in cause you need to sail from A to B which will take you this many minutes, etc. Now if you haven't logged in the day before, and you don't know whats going down, you can log in only to find your clan is doing something on the other side of the map so to speak, and you can't join in cause you don't have a ship there. Now when you log in you get on TS, they'll say, hey we're at Port X about to do a PB, get up here and help us out. You TP a ship up and you're right in the action.

Lets just try it, there will be instances where it'll be very frustrating, but I think you'll have just as much moments where its a great comfort.

[Several nations send colonial fleets to West Indies.]

I think all in all, if the towing keeps me from doing stuff I don't like doing like AFK sailing, thats a better experience all round. 

It'll take as much PvP as it will give imho.

I've never heard anybody complain about the towing. It makes the map feel "smaller", so you're always closer to PvP.

[Foreign clan alliances]

1 hour ago, Peter Goldman said:

This was an answer to The Spud suggestion. He has an idea of alliance as a greater form of clans as EVE style most likely, but EVE has no nations that I am aware of?

 

At the very least it would be a good idea to visualy mark the clans/people your clan is allied with in OW, maybe even make it possible to easily visualise what ports are owned by friendly clans on the map.

I haven't played EVE so don't know how stuff worked there.

[Foreign clan alliances]

4 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

I would suggest different RoE rules near port territorial waters that is contested.

But first... Clan friendly list needs to be as request/invite. At the moment it is one sided so:

1. Clans are asking each other if they have their clans on the list. (One side cannot check the other)

2. Members are not sure if they can go into PB or not.

3. One clan can add other clans that are not willing to be on the list (not a problem currently, but reqd further)

If Swedish and British clans add each other to the friend list (once accepts invite from another, must be 2-sided), near the territorial waters of contested port British players can attack "rogue clan". 

Why not make the option to create an "Alliance Group", like one would create a clan.

Say I create "The Black Alliance" as a pirate, and I invite other clans into this alliance. Every clan in that alliance is now allied to eachother.
When you sail in OW, you could click a player and it could say "allied by The Black Alliance".
Officers from the connected clans could vote for the removal of a clan in case of distrust.
Downside is that a clan can not officialy befriend a clan outside of the Alliance group.

If you use this you could create an "Alliance Chat" tab, which can be usefull.
It would also remove the possibility of a clan being befriend with two clans that are at war.
Treason is always good fun, but I think it'll be causing more troubles than anything else.

 

[Foreign clan alliances]

1 hour ago, rediii said:

They gained trust on the enemy side and betrayed them this way. Enemy side has to put trust into them and make the clan a friend first. Happened in history several times and should be also possible in this sandbox game. Things like this make history

True. Although i'm prety sure this will be brought up again at some point, just mark my words

I like the possibility for some back stabbing, and some last minute surprises. I can allready imagine clans spying eachother.

But like you said, can for example swedes fight swedes? Looks kinda hard to me if you can't tag em in OW, but they can fight you in the PB?
After the battle that clan will be untouchable by you and can just do its thing as it has always done. So I'm assuming that won't be possible.

 

[Foreign clan alliances]

I like it, lets test it!

One note:

If a clan is allied to two clans fighting over a port that clan can put people on both sides of the PB. Meaning they can intentionaly take up slots from the side who they want to "lose" the PB, and just sit there and do nothing.  Thats going to be a problem we better solve now.

[Player-selected ships 2017 - Initial poll]

I think we realy need a 3rd rate ship to compete with the bellona for the sake of variation.

Maybe keep this poll open long enough and let admins post the link in global chat every now and then, so people won't complain they never knew there could be voted.

[Why did players leave?]

I think its just as soon as the word wipe drops, people just put the game on hold until its "wiped". It seems somewhere the word mapwipe got dropped and people just immediatly stopped the RvR, which is less people, which then causes the PvP oriented people to stop playing bit by bit. Its just how it goes.

Comes the wipe, people will be back, new conquest system, more ships, etc... there's even people holding off for the UI to be finished.

 

[Forthcoming patch final discussion.]

9 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Really how many folks actually do RvR on EU?   Prob very little over all.  It's mainly reserved for the elite clans that won't let any one else in them.  .   

Its just you had clans organising the hostility raising, triggering the PB. And then you had these solo players or small clans who would join in just any ship for the sake of getting a few conquest marks. It divided the Britis nation, and it made them unable to propperly field an offensive fleet for a couple of months. The Conquest marks also heavily contributed to this problem.

These War Companies will solve this in my opinion, as long as each nation has a fair chance on having PB worthy ships we should see a fair amount of RvR returning to the tables. As for the timers, I heared a guys proposition once to have a timer set, and have the timer get "wider" after each day that no port battle was created for that port. 

[Forthcoming patch final discussion.]

Concering the PvE rewards, we realy need to make sure that its not again a money printing service. At this time I think its grindy, but at least you know you'll never get stinking rich doing missions. Its more like your spending money.

If you can get 500k for a Vic kill in PvE, we're going to be swimming in millions and millions of gold in no time. And those who are lower ranked and new players will be the ones who will drop out of the game for this.

We'll be back to people putting up buy contracts for unreasonable prises just capitalising on all the rare stuff. Ships will be crazy expensive again. Its gona break the economy. Think its prety fine atm.

Maybe just use a money multiplier for lower ranked players, and reduce it rank by rank. So top rank players only get the current amount of money for missions.

[Preliminary discussion of the changes to conquest - clan wars are coming]

1 minute ago, admin said:

are you sure?

• lets say pvp rewards are increased a lot (by 3)
• special chests are added for pvp players based on pvp score they gain 
• special zone 6v6 is created in the center of map where every pvp player will come for fun for equal fights

Will it change something?

Thats going to feed the "PvP Elite" endless amounts of gold, goods, notes etc. and we'll be back to everybody owning millions and tons of first rates.

The problem we have is, we either make it easy for the new players but it will give the PvP Elite a very easy time getting everything they want (as before the wipe), or we make it hard for the elite to get everything they want but at the same time the lower level players are having a very hard time acquiring gold, ships etc.

We just need a good tutorial so you can get the new players skilled allot faster, especialy with the option to cap AI ships it should be ALLOT easier for newer players to maintain a steady gold reserve as they don't need to spend a 100k on a ship and guns everytime they lose a ship.

[To Devs: PvE server has potential]

I think the PvE server is definitely nice, and I get why people want a more relaxed NA experience. Some people are very competitive and put in tons of hours to get the best gear etc, and other players just like the age of sail, like relaxed trading, crafting, a fight now and then. It has none of the salt that the PvP servers have. You know the "Hey, Captain X thanks for your indiaman full of loot man, the Royal Navy greets you lol". I get why people don't want none of that. PvE is ideal for them.

You could implement a "OW Duel" Possibility, where you can click a player in OW invite him for a Duel (other player can deny), but if he accepts a tag starts running and an OW duel is started. Like with the old Duel you can't lose anything. Devs can say, well arcade stuff is for "Legends", but I don't see any negatives involved in this.  PvE might be the middleground between hardcore PvP and NA Legends.

[Captains Log]

Instead of having potential players read trough the often badly written reviews with nothing but pointless negativism, they should read something like this.

To me it perfectly captures the excitement this game offers if Age of Sail is your thing. Very well written Sir.