The Spud

That is obviously true, and I am aware of that, it would only be exploitable for people running alts. As after every battle the bank would automaticaly deduct 25% or more from the total gains. So you could only avoid paying back the bank if you do no battles at all. It would also easily show what accounts are alts and which accounts not. As in Account A, account B and account C all loaned 100k and transfered it to account D, and no payments have been made by A, B or C. Other than that you can't realy do any exploiting, and a 100k is not that much money. Meaning that even if people with alts abuse it, its not going to give them a massive advantage, anyways no bigger advantage than the ones they allready have. People with alts allready have extra redeemables anyways.

What about a "Bank"? With a loan you can get of like max 100k gold which is enough to buy and outfit a 6th rate. Every battle you do and you get gold 25% goes towards paying back that 100k gold. You can always pay back faster. A small interest is to be payed on the loan. Say you payed back 20k gold, you can then take a new loan of 20k, your total debt can never be over 100k. Would be ideal to get people started as after you get out of the cutter, battles are more rewarding. Could disable it for higher ranks. Or limit it to a one time use only. It would however benefit those running alts, who could pick a loan, transfer the gold, and never do battles so they never pay back the loan.

Maybe they should have some reward system in place that solely caters to the new players. Like first 7th rate AI sunk, get X amount of gold or XP, first PvP kill X amount of gold or XP, etc... Would be much more rewarding and would give more to those who need a bit of a boost to get up and running in this game.

I think they just had to have a massive evaluation of the past year of development, because it was two steps forward one step backward for the biggest part of the year. They tried to please everyone, which is impossible, and instead of having more respect from the players they got less and less. And now they kinda made some critical decisions and sticked to it. I think if you have determined where you want to go its easier to get there, then to just make it up along the way. So thats why I think they are able to implement so much at once, and I think it'll be the same going forward till release. It is like you mentioned a bit frustrating to have a wipe anounced, and then have like 50% of the allready low player count stop playing the game for two months, cutting the fun for the people who are still playing the game. They should have been closer to actualy finishing the patch before anouncing the wipe, and then just two weeks in advance call out the wipe date and have all people just waste their ships in massive OW PvP for two weeks. And then have a wipe. Would be less frustrating. I also think that the current live version was a somewhat stable well playable version. As there were no specific frustrations people had to deal with (like with the fine woods). So it would not need urgent updates or fixes to keep the players happy. Giving them time to launch patches on testbed. At this point, I myself have lost a bit of patience, and I hope the patch comes fast fast fast.

And was rigged fore and aft...

It could also work alternatively, like you would have to sail in a "hostility bomb" to the docs, unload and sail back out. So you would have to choose in advance if you want to raid to hostility bomb or raid for the loot. Like raids could give 70% and loot could give 35% hostility. I would also be OK with just doing a raid and announcing "Sweden assembled a raid fleet to raid port X" and if the attacker wins it insta shedules a PB for the next day. Would be a two step process to capture a port. You could keep the hostility trough PvP/PvE and have this additionaly.

What about with the added Fort/tower range and damage, you enter a raid like you would enter a PB (big outer circle). You then have to sail up to the docks, transfer goods (maybe use a 20 second timer or so) and then have to sail out again (till you can escape like in a real battle). This would mean, you can never do this alone, you can never do this without destroying the forts. If you would use a conquest flag like mechanic, the attacker will need to come in force as the defender can sit under the towers/forts. Attacker will need Mortar Brigs, and a high enough number of ships to destroy possible defender players. This would prevent easy raids done by a very small group. It would make some area's difficult to raid, and some areas easier.

These massive PB attack fleets in the early days, when we sailed out and all you could see were friendly sails. Intercepting other massive screening fleets. Those were the 1000+ player server days. I miss that. The battles you fight outnumbered and outgunned, but you manage to pull a win anyway. Doing that perfect stern rake where you watch the crewkill's go up realy fast, I love that. The many KPR Party's, the small battles, ... So many Magic Moments!

Just to get a clear confirm on this, so I don't screw it up for myself. We can redeem only on one server, so we can be only rear admiral (current rank) on one server, on the other servers we would have to start from scratch but we can play on them? Or can we redeem on all three servers, but progress is stored seperatly?

Is today THE day? :)

I think we'll have the people that are still around and who have been kinda following the whole "who goes where" stuff on the forums, but probably 50% of the players will log in post wipe and they'll have no clue why there's a PvP EU and a PVP Global server? My personal reaction would be, roll with the one that has the highest population. Low server population is the number one reason people stop being interested to log in. For RvR being the feature that kills the game, as soon as the wipe was announced all the RvR minded people stopped playing, about 50% of the server or even more. I would love to see one server with all players on it, cause it was a ton of fun to have a 1000+ players on one server. I hope the devs also implement something so people can change over to another server within the first few weeks, cause as far as I have understood you can only redeem stuff on one server?

Could also be they want to prevent people from using heavy undercrewed ships in their fleets, to prevent tags, or to be able to tag. And possibly so the alts can't crew a cerb and enter and insta leave a PB at ensign level. As they usualy delete their character after they got "busted".

To be fair, I think its a good thing. I have seen too many way undercrewed ships the last couple of weeks. Month ago or so I was in battle and we engaged some pirates idk, and I hadn't noticed a guy on our side sailed a vic as master and commander or so. So we started engaging a buc, and the buc was nearly down when he just boarded the guy in his undercrewed vic in one round. So we were one vic down, and the other guy just had a fresh vic to start over again. I don't blame the guy, I'm sure he didn't want to lose his vic, but in a battle you can't have people showing up undercrewing a ship at 1/3 of the needed crew or so , that just a worthless ship. Do wonder if you manage to escape a battle where you got severely stern raked, and you TP to friendly port, and you got no rum nor money to up the crew to above the requirement, what are you supposed to do then? Sell the ship and buy a cutter?

I would have imagined that crafted ships would carry the wood type & trim in yellow, which gave a bigger boost then grey specs. But that would still not be enough of a difference to make crafted ships worth buying at multiple times the NPC price. Give crafted ship a RNG figurehead

What exactly is the current situation on the testbed that higher quality NPC ships should be required?

These people writing "reviews" in one sentence, jeez. Doesn't even know what the actual meaning of a scam is. To be fair, the steam review system is just plain bad, it should have a score system. With a big list of say 10 features and you score them from 1 to 10. Gameplay, Sound, graphics, community, development, amount of bugs, performance, etc. not just "Postive" and "Negative". Thats like saying the game is either Realy good or Realy bad. When you go out to eat food, and its not realy what you imagined it to be but its still prety acceptable, you will be more likely to not recommend it to friends.

I think it is still a better system then some people having acces to realy rare upgrades, and the other ones having to do with minor quality ones. Eventualy we will all have acces to the same stuff. These hardcore players might have a ton of XP on their ships after a week, but you'll get there in maybe a month or two months or so.

I think the numbers will make people forget minor annoyances, and you are correct that we should focus on a broad playerbase and not personal preferences. I think as things were, with the OW speed and with the no limit TP, it would be the stuff that suits most players. Its fast for those who like it fast (tp'ing etc.) and its slow for those who like the sailing (you don't have to TP). But it frustrates some more realism driver players, which have every right to speak their mind and be annoyed, that its unfair game. And they are correct in doing so. The only way I see this to work out best, and i said this a couple of times, is to have (aside from the EU and Global server) a realism server. I get that people like that and I get that some features are killing it for some players, I would like to try realism server myself if it would ever be established. But the truth is that with just a couple of minor settings you can have regular mode AND realism mode. I mean all it takes is have the one server set to x1 OW speed, and no TP, and maybe some altering of ship stats. And then have the semi realism server with x1.2 (of what is the OW speed atm?) and TP like it is atm. These are small tweaks to settings but they create two completely different games, with basicaly no extra cost aside from the server. I believe I read somehwere in an old article they sold 70k copies, and I think the people active on this forum are maybe a 100 -150 or so. So statisticaly our opinions would be nigligable. If 10% comes back after release (I mean they bought this game, so I assume at some time they'll play it), thats 7000 people who might see things completely different as we do. They might be filling up this forum with completely other visions about the game, and we'll be the minority. If you offer two game types it'll become clear prety fast what gametype is prefered by looking at the player numbers on each server.

That is for sure not what I want. We're talking about the two extremes here, one side the arcade Sea Trials and the other side the no TP, x1 sailing speed, etc.. ("realism"). To say you either fit on the one end or on the other end I believe to be incorrect. I would play NA any way the wind blows, if its no TP x1 OW speed, that'll be less fun but still fun enough for me. Maybe if they get the trading sorted (no more multi million gold a day) I might even enjoy that for a bit. For me the major anoyance with the OW sailing (dispite it probably being as good as it can be performance wise) is the way the ship moves in OW, it feels static, the sails don't realy move, there are no flags, the ship movement is programmed animation. Again I know its like that for performance reasons, but it just kills the immersion for me (it feels arcady). Thats like the main reason I don't like OW sailing. The other reason, it being boring, might be a bit biased, as we have been playing on a low population server for so long now that I forget sometimes that I didn't dislike it as much 6 or 8 months ago, because you would be scanning the horizons for enemy sails, you would pass some friendlies see some baddies. For the last months now, I haven't been doing that just AFK sailing, even with trader ships filled to the brim, cause I figured I would have to be realy realy realy unlucky to find an enemy here. If we would see even a half filled server again, my vision might change again to long distance OW sailing being OK. But if you sail, and you're 99% sure you're going to make it without spotting a single enemy, thats just pure time wasting and not realy age of sail like. Thats why I would want TP'ing to be in, not to smack me right in the middle of the frontlines or make a safe exit, but to skip a possibly very boring safe sailing trip. No TP'ing is fine if there are numbers online, like 1000 and up. But imagine we wouldn't have had no limit TP's for the last 4 months with 350 people online? We would either no longer be with 350 players, or we would have been playing the game on a much smaller area. As said before, numbers in this game will make up for alot of stuff.

I get that, but I know for a fact that TP's were not "randomly" used back at early EA. With the cooldown TP's are valuable, and you would only use them once you were sure they would be worth it. You didn't TP to hunt 2 guys in an frigate and be stuck there for the next 3 hours having nothing to do. It allows people to play on two fronts at the same time. If you log on and nothings happening, and all you can do is sail 60 minutes to your other outpost you'll just log out. I like the sailing don't get me wrong, but that little comfort of being able to TP once max twice in one session is not going to be game breaking I think.

I think we need a TP with cooldown, so people will use it one time max each session. We had this at the beginning of EA, and I think it worked fine. You only used it when you realy needed it and when the TP was worth it. The short/medium trips will still be sailed as they are not worth TP'ing for. Which will mostly be the ones you'll be doing in an actual ship and not a basic cutter.These long TP's are good for avoiding Basic Cutter AFK sailing trips. If people can fight on two fronts on one evening, instead of one. Its going to be allot more motivating for people to get online, instead of finding out you're at belize and tonights action is at Bridgetown. Like I said before, it will limit the effect of possible low population. I'm against PvP marks for TP's, unless its a token that resets your cooldown to 0. I don't mind sailing, but the map is just way to big to not have TP's of any sorts.

I think this might be a great idea. This might easily create "frontlines" where two enemy nations meet. The TP between friendly ports (maybe with a cooldown timer) is still a good idea, because it minimises the effects of potential "low player numbers". As a fleet of 50 can defend/attack one area one hour, and then TP to the other area to defend/attack there, something that (in case of no TP) would only be possible if you have 50 players on one spot and 50 on the other. For example for the Brits the Bridgetown area might (as before) be a PvP hotspot, where the eastern coalition meets the western coalition. Belize might be the other end of the frontline and Haiti might be a 3rd point. However with the removal of alliances (where I believe player created alliances will be made again as before), wouldn't it be realy hard for France for example to have Denmark-Norge help them out if they can't use a freetown or French port to operate out of. Wouldn't we see the return of "handing over" regions, for the sole purpose of having an allie near to help you out? And would that be accepted or not? If you can TP between friendly outposts, you can always TP to somewhere closer to the action. If you got 3 PB's planned in the Bridgetown area, and you're at Belize. You'll just log off and wait for stuff to happen in your area. Instead you can TP there and join the fun, wait 3 hours TP back to Belize. Same goes especialy for the spanish who will otherwise have a hard time preventing people from nibbeling away their regions. Sounds to me like the best middleground between TP everywhere and TP nowhere.

When everybody had everything and tons of money, a big part of the fun leaves the game. If there's nothing in the game you are wanting for, then a big part of the fun is gone. With everybody having to watch his wallet, and investing all he has in outposts etc. again. RvR will be played differently. Losses will hurt at the beginning, and the race to get the best ships first will be allot of fun I think. There'll be no endless supplies of 1st rates etc. I'm prety excited for the wipe actualy. I still hope for forced mixed PB fleets, I would just want to try that. Maybe it would be ideal to test it on the live server while we still can.

Obviously if they don't change the numbers the differences between the 4th rates will just stay the same. But with the structure it might be possible to sink agga's by stern raking them as that reduces the structural integrity of the ship. Haven't realy done allot of stern raking on the latest patch, so I don't know if they tweaked it (which I think they did).

I think its more important for the player base to have a realy good patch, then to have a fast patch. People are playing other games right now, they'll keep their eyes on NA and when they see the patch hit they'll rejoin the game. If its only mediocre its going to be a dead server again after a couple of weeks. Let the devs figure stuff out, lets wait out the testbed patches, lets do our best to test it as good as we can and post our well structured opions and comments here. If the new testbed patch is live, we should just all play testbed instead of the live servers. We can have the same numbers and the same fights while testing out stuff...