The Spud

Its going to take some time to get stuff organised after wipe thats for sure. Aside from the fact there'll be numerous hours of AFK sailing involved, I kinda start to like the idea of having a very hirstoricaly correct situation where fleets move slow and can't be all over the place at once. There'll be new frontlines and campaigns going. And much of it will be the same as at the beginning of EA. However I feel this will only realy be fun if we have a good amount of players to actualy make this fun. When can we have the testbed patch?

I think any further discussion here is going to be pointless and is just going to add nothing but frustration on both sides. Good side: Devs took a clear direction and development will be easier as they focus one gamestyle. Down side: Current community with different player types will be torn apart. Lets hope it all turns out better then expected, and maybe at a later date some items can be rediscussed. We are getting nowhere with these discussions.

Wouldn't you agree that dispite the 5% of people who troll and trashtalk other players/nations, that the 95% of people who do so are contributing to creating a better NA community. I think that the global communication (more then the inbattle communication) contribute to allot of "player created content". The organised Small Battles, the tournaments, the smaller competitions, the "we are at X with a group, come attack us" etc... I feel that they add so much to the game that it outweighs the negatives by a realy large margin. I don't believe this will work on a 2000 man server, I think it will eventualy drive away players out of smaller nations. If there are a 80 players in your small nation, it will just feel like you are playing on an 80 player server and the other players might as wel be realy smart NPC's cause there'll be no difference in them beside their skill.

The chat change is bad... I have supported the devs in all their initiatives, and I could always see reasoning in their motives. But I can not agree with removing the global chat. It is chopping the allready very thin community in even smaller pieces. No more organising Small Battles etc... its a shame. To talk to these people in TS is going to be nearly impossible. Global chat was ideal for random banter during dead moments or chatting with your enemy (in a polite and respectfull way). Bad move in my opinion. PS: Is the Testbed Server updated with the new patch(es), or is it still the multi dura one?

I think where the game will differ post patch is that the capitals will be the trading HQ's again, so like it was before the fine woods there will always be stuff for sale at your capital and the only place you ever need to bring live oak to is to the capital. I guarantee you people will be sailing Live Oak up and down if there is enough money to be made with that. On top of that everybody starts with the same gear and gold, so there'll be no players sitting on stacks of millions just buying the shop empty.

I don't cry on the forums about losing a ship, I just don't want stuff implemented that is going to increase the amount of shitty fights. I care more about the wasted time fighting something that isn't fun instead of actualy losing. My gaming time is limited, and last thing I want to do is spending a whole night getting insta sunk or having to run from a battle, where I could have a ton of good battles. The game is about fun, and the more fun people are having the more they will log on, and the more people will see reviews and play the game. No timers is not going to do that.

@JobaSet That 4vs8 could probably have turned in a 4 vs 16 or more if the timer would have remained open. You can never win if the enemy can keep pouring in ships till its an insta win. Thats what i'm trying to say its going to be mega gankfest if battles stay open cause 80% of the battles are near a capital or area where one side can bring enough ships to fill the battle and the other will get none. And you probably were very happy after your 4vs8 victory, but thats only because it didn't turn into a 4vs16. I can perfectly do with a 2 minute timer or an insta close timer cause it has fixed factors, you know the amount and type of ships and you can start to construct a strategy and so can the enemy. And you play your little game of chess where you think ahead and you try to predict moves or force errors, and in the end its the starting positions, the strategy combined with the skillset of the captains that will determine who's going to win the battle. And not a SoL fleet who jumps in to roflstomp your whole operation. There'll be no GG at the end of that match. You probably like fighting against the odds, cause a normal even battle is too easy, fair enough. But you can still tag bigger fleets with the insta close or timer option. And you can get a 4vs8 that will not turn into a 4vs25.

I think we differ on the fact that I don't always see the game in "RvR mode", don't get me wrong I play the RvR part and like it very much and i'll try to help as much as I can wherever I can, but when nothing is going down RvR wise and i go out to look for PvP I'm not thinking from the RvR point of view. Then its not my nation vs the other nation, and every enemy ship you can sink is a step closer to victory, I just want to have a fun fight, its captain(s) vs captain(s), not nation vs nation. Had a battle with some swedes/danes yesterday, fairly even fight about 10vs10 or so, lasted the full 90 minutes. Some sank, some got capped, everybody had great fun. If halfway trough a couple more of us, or more of them would have joined it would have been a 60 minute fight max and far less fun. As the RvR parts are so timed and planned, this game allows for both massive, all goes, sink em all RvR and at the same time in the off times some great long battles where for me its more important to have fun then it is to actualy have a win. And if all battles would always be open, there would be far less of those fun battles.

I lack the skills and the patience to ever be able to accomplish this, well done.

@koltes I get what you and Jobaset are saying, you want the games to be impredictable, and I get that you might like the rush of never being "safe". I would say that the vast majority of non RvR related battles are around the nation capitals, which means that one side has far more ships near then the other side, always. Meaning that always open battles will always result in one side always being outnumbered. Unles you want to sink every time you go out hunting, you need to be sailing a fast ship to get out of gank fests, you could probably manage a 1vs2 maybe a 1vs3 (i can't). But when it ends up with anything above that you can't win, so you'll need a reno or a pirate refit surprise to make your escape. This would mean that anyone going out with anything else, like indefatigables etc would probably never make it out of any battle alive. Now in OW battles away from capitals you might not get that problem, and it might me managable to keep the timers open to lure in any passing ship. But as of the last couple of months I probably had only a couple of those battles that were non RvR related. This might be back when numbers pick up. I usualy hunt solo, or in a small group, and where do you go, to capitals cause its a guaranteed PvP area. Now again we might find plenty of battles elsewhere if numbers pick up, and then open timers would not result in a gank fest. I think open timers only suits for a certain play style, if you're a group of three fast ships boarding fitted, I'm sure you can pull off a boarding before the cavalry arrives. But thats not my playing style to be fair. If the argument for open timers is you like the element of surprise and the fact you need to adapt to new situations quickly, then I think it doesn't outweigh the disadvantages. It would realy force a certain playstyle upon us which is unrealistic to begin with. Ships could not undock on a split second, even at Trafalgar part of the franco/spanish fleet could not participate in any meaningfull way for a couple of hours cause they couldn't get to the battle dispite being part of the attack line. Here you can use the increased OW speed to get to a battle where with normal speed you wouldn't make it. It'll be the game of fast taggers and slow heavy hitters all over again. Thats why I feel that the most realistic battle scenario is with the insta close, where they copy the OW situation into the battleworld including all who could make it to the battle in a descent timeframe (bigger circle). Cause idealy how the game should have looked like is only one world, the open world = battle world. And the insta close is the only RoE that gets close to how battles would look like in that scenario. You know very well how long it takes for you to get to the battle if you're at the outer circle when the battle starts. If you're upwind from the battle you're even less likely to get there (unless in a realy fast ship) as the battle will be sailing away from you. It requires people to be aware of their position in OW, to be grouped up, to not travel alone. As it realisticly was. Now you can have your group all over the place and when one gets tagged the others can be in the battle in a couple of seconds. So whatever you do in OW doesn't realy matter as long as the one getting tagged or doing the tagging doesn't make a mess of it. Not all battles need to be fair and balanced, certainly not, but an always signaling setting and insta close would probably give the best amount of fun battles. You say lobby style, thats certainly not where i'm after, I do like the randomness of the battles. I do think there is zero fun to be had when your in a big group chasing one ship, or when you're the one getting chased by a big group. I would just give up on the game if I woudn't have a realy fun long fight from time to time. Maybe they could just give the option to run battle always open timers for those who want it, but I think not many will use it.

As long as doesn't require me to memorize a ton of keys to operate a ship, I would be allright with a little more sailing skills required in battle. It would realy make a chase come down to the better captain and not just chosing best angle and auto skipper. However for new players it might be just that step too far, its allready a challenging game that takes many hours of sailing to get a grip of. Maybe give an auto option for anyone below flag cap. I think a long time ago the devs mentioned something about different wind strenghts, and how a ship that is upwind could take away the wind from the ship in the downwind position, etc. But I can't remember if they ditched this or if they are going to add it later on. Anyways, if it won't be implemented in the main servers, it would be a good thing to have in a speciel realism server. For the age of sail purists, with nation bound ships, different wind speeds, one dura ships, provisions, limited cannon shots/powder, x1 OW speed. etc...

What is the perfect battle in your opinion? Is it an even battle where tactics and skill matter or the battles where you cry help in the nation chat and have a dozen of your mates show up to put your team in an advantage. For me its the even battle where if you win you know you were the better team not the bigger team, therefore i support anything that promotes more even fights. There is no skill needed to fight a 5 vs 1, you're going to win always, for a 5 vs 5 only the better captains can win. And especialy since the nation population is unbalanced, it would be stronlgy in favour of the bigger nations to have always open battles. Thats why I say, insta close + always signaling + always control.

The battle screen teleport favours the gankers more then it benefits the carebears. And the 2 minute battle open timer and the 2 minute can't join battle timer were implemented because some people used it to set up unrealistic ambushes, one ship baiting a couple of enemies and then his friends undock to join the battle. Hiding behind an iseland or somewhere out of sight is all perfectly fine, and even clever. The undocking and joining battles was not. For sure the spawning when joining a battle should be looked at, sertainly if we're going back to 2 or 5 minute timers. But again thats less of an issue when the battle insta closes. I think Hethwill proposed to have the insta battle close ROE + ALWAYS signaling ALWAYS control. Which I think we should test and then evaluate with a poll to have the 30 minute, 5 minute, 2 minute or insta close, with the options to have signaling or control always on. If we would remove all "restricting" ellements like timers etc... it would just be more frustrating fights less fun fights. Like in real life, the rules are made cause some people stopped using common sense.

Those amonst many, basicaly the things that would never have happened IRL (Although 25 man 1st rate fleets are not realistic too). A small group of frigates would never have engaged a SoL fleet. I thought they fixed this? Or is that still in the testbed, with the BR rating having to be a certain % to be able to tag? If this game would be played in only one world (OW = battle world) it would probably be solving 90% of this games issues. That should be the goal for NA2.

Its not the carebears creating carebear patches, its the people using tricks and shady game mechanics to get an unfair advantage in a battle. Log outs, hide in port to join bait battle, etc... I won't complain when I run into an enemy fleet and get caught, I will complain however if the oponent "bends" the game mechanics to get an unfair advantage. Allot of these rules have taken care of these things. In battle I don't care what tactics are used, chain, demast, grape, stern rake,... those are all real mechanics that I don't have any problems with obviously. So I wouldn't put all these timers etc... on the account of carebears but on those using shady game mechanics to get an unfair advantage.

If there would be exact numbers known it would just be used as salty argumentation, if the smallest nation loses it'll be because the other nation has x amount of players, and if the smaller nation wins its glorious cause they only have half the numbers etc... Its gonna do nothing good to the server. Idealy it would be great to just have a week of testing, and then evaluate if there are no power blocks (like you probably had on PvP2). We should not block players from joining certain nations, if you buy this game as a British guy or a French guy thinking you can join your own nation only to see you can only join sweden, denmark and spain would be a bit frustrating. Not all players join for the RvR aspect so they can't be bothered about balancing. Thats why I think its up to the people who do bother about balancing, to balance out the game. Instead of balance at the bottom with the new players, we should balance at the top with the experienced players. I know we have some "strong personalities" across all nations, I know these would never be able to work together, but there are allot of players out there that are very skilled that probably wouldn't mind fighting alongside a former enemy. In my opinion this is the best way to guarantee balance. There will never be perfect balance, but at least it gives us some tool to balance it ourselves instead of relying on new players to choose the smaller nations. Thats why I think it should be possible to switch easily, I know you can do it if you organise it right, but how many players would ever have wanted to switch nation but didn't because of the troubles it gives.

I think there are reasons why they don't show nation numbers to be honest. Numbers can often be misleading (alts, new players, non PvP players), and it could spark allot of discussion when things would appear to be propperly imbalanced numbers wise. What actualy counts is how balanced a game feels in the game, if things appear to be balanced in game there is no need to look at numbers. I think for the last couple of months on PvP1 the imbalance has been somewhat minimal, but if you only have about 500 people online the numeral differences are not that big and not that important. I think we should be able to switch nations more easily, so whenever one side is steamrolling there could be a meeting and there could be discussed how many people would need to switch to what nation, and they could just "pick up their stuff" and move to another nation without having to deal with allot of difficulties. This could give the option to create a couple of balance clans, who can be switched around for balance.

Wouldn't it be an idea if, in the first week after the wipe, you could just rerol and keep your stuff. So theres an opportunity to get a bit of nation balancing going, or for people who rejoined the game after a long break only to see all their friends are now rolling a different nation.

Sure, but I think like with my clan about 80% of the people not having logged on in weeks/months, only +-3 active officers. Its probably a good idea to undo all clans so all clans are sure to start with active members. On the other hand, some people might rush to "claim" some famous clan names just to screw with those guys. And nobody would ever know who did it. Might be better to leave it as is then.

I'm prety sure they mean everybody who bought the game and created a character before final release. So you'll most probably get one.

Would be a good idea to wipe all clans so nations can "reorganise" better afterwards. Will be plenty of new people and people comming back I imagine, possible some nation switches maybe.

Nice to have that info. As sruPL is pointing out activity will drop before patch as crafting and RvR will be pointless. So shouldn't we come up with some "activities" (genre small battle challenge) to keep it fun and interesting between now and the 19th? We all got plenty of ships and gold and stuff to get rid off before the 19th. Any ideas?

Sometimes its worth considering to fight the oponent right from the start instead of running away from him and eventualy having to fight him with 30% of your sails gone and no sail repair left. They usualy won't expect it and their ships will probably be speed fitted and cedar wood if they are realy out to hunt traders. If they start going for your sails, and you start going for their hull there is a chance at one point the guy will have to change tactics to avoid getting sunk. I think many battles have been lost that could have been won if they would fight from the start instead of running away and having to fight with a massive handicap in the end.

Well its cool to fight with carro's again, I found out yesterday I still need to perfect my aiming with it after not having shot one in a long time. But its great fun. I think longs are favourable over carro's towards the second half of the match where things get spread out a bit. But did do better with my carro's on yesterday.

Well, as i was forced smack in the middle of a group of carro fitted essexes early on in the game which nearly sank me, I had to keep the distance for the rest of the game. So all in all it was not a bad choice having longs fitted. Will bring carro's next time tho.