KrakkenSmacken

So there is a "test" about to take place on 1 dura ships, as well as a moving of many temporary upgrades into the permanent. In consideration of this, I would like to propose a different system that would result in a more personal ship style experience, module upgrade path for ships. In this system, the module system would involve building the basic module, and once installed on a ship, they could then be upgraded. Rather than just requiring notes to increase the value of the upgrade, new recipes that preform the upgrade would be required. Then, when ships lose a Dura, all installed modules have a chance of being reduced in quality as well. This would show as wear and tear on the ship. Because of the new upgrade path, those modules could be restored at a cost. I would also include basic quality of ship in this. A Dura lost Gold "speed" ship, may see that "speed" upgrade reduced. That loss could also be fixed though crafting. In addition I would also like to see a similar way to replace lost Dura on ships, but that process also has a chance to reduces the quality of this ship. In this way a captain could develop his favorite ship, possibly name it, and try to keep it held together through many battles. It would also allow for making pirates life a bit harder with ship restrictions. If we can't build Victories any more, then we have to capture a 1 dura grey, upgrade and replace the Dura to 5 to make it a Gold 2 Dura. (Personally I dislike the idea of 1 dura ships.) Devs have said they want to add more interesting/involved crafting, as well as increase ship maintenance costs. Constantly repairing upgrades, having dura damage mirrored in module damage, and restoring both could be one way to make that happen.

Yea it is, since at one point we only had one port left. The only reason the pirates are so successful is that everyone else isn't, not game mechanics. The other irony of changing port capture for pirates will be that the port capture focused pirates will probably just shift en mass to another nation to continue playing that game, and wipe the board again, just with a different color. It only takes a small amount of effort for the pirates to agree that for example the "Spanish" are also "pirates", and simply use that nation as the port capture arm of the pirate world. Not really different than how pirates won't green on green, despite the mechanics that allow it.

If raids let us hit the dock and take what we could carry or everything on the dock, especially "sold" and items still awaiting port consumption, there would be no need to have free loot transport. Walking away with +2000 holds of Tobacco would be more than profitable enough. I hate anything "free". It smacks of some other failed mechanics.

At this point I personally just mentally rearrange the words to consider the current casualty system as including morale, especially with the med kits that "replace" crew at sea. When a cannon crew gets grapped, as OP is complaining about, it loses 4 crew. In my head that is 0-1 dead, 0-3 injured, and the rest in permanent shock. Functionally moral would/could work the same way as completely de-crewing a ship with grape. Same ship loss, same point in the battle where the player loses the ability to prevent ship loss, same state, (your ship is captured), etc. It probably just feels better for the players to think they fought to the last man, which is good enough reason to keep things as they are in the game, if the devs are considering that crew loss includes death/injury/demoralization in the part of the design that they keep to themselves. Hell, even one sentence in the "what is crew loss" description would do. "Crew loss is when a member of your crew is permanently unable to fight. This can be from death, Injury or demoralization. Medical kits will restore crew from injury or demoralization." (This would/could kinda require a limit on now many crew could be replaced by kit.) That would be enough for me. EDIT: (Post Ewok's like) Thinking more about this, it would consider making the mechanic like this. Split crew into the three groups as they are injured. When you capture a ship, it has the injured and demoralized, a percentage of which you can convince "press" into service. When you escape losing your ship with very low crew, the demoralized crew restore, and health kits restore the injured. When in a fight, the officer can restore demoralized like a repair action, maybe requires a rum ration or something. When out of a fight doctors restore crew at a specific rate on the OW. The dead need to be replaced at port.

Two thoughts on the "can't see" issue. One, making it a game of mastermind could have issues with the idea of fighting with your eyes closed would take agency away. Eventually everyone will know the safest strategy, and use that, or it will basically be luck of the draw that you picked correctly against your opponent. Two, it is hardly realistic. In close quarters combat, the officer on the command deck should be able to tell what at the very least the general intent of the other force is, and make counter choices against it. An example of limited visibility would be if you could see what the enemy had marked as priority, without seeing the actual number of crew, and be required to use timing memory to determine the actual numbers on the other side, or not being able to count numbers in "Brace", but be able to see everyone else. All the above said, I would prefer to err on the side of transparency of both sides. You don't play chess with half the board obscured, and the boarding game with it's rock/paper/scissor model is closer to chess than anything else.

What I don't like is the whole Juke/Bait nature of the boarding system as a whole. Officers would be barking orders, men moving from task to task, (Brace/Attack for example). Those reactions are not instant in real life, so they should not be instant in the mini game. The entire boarding model would be better served by converting it to something similar to how crew management in the other phase of the game works. Assign priority to a task, men move to that task based on priority, number of men on a task determines how often an offensive event occurs (like how fast to re-load a cannon, or how there is a reload delay when switching from chain to ball). To allow for sudden and surprise changes in battle, have crew in "Brace" able to move into new states far more quickly, but require time to switch back to brace. Then base casualties on individual match up attacks as they happen in real time. Then ping/lag would not be such a major issue in the boarding game.

That could be only a partial solution, depending on how the new RvR mechanics work to keep fights from drifting too far from hot locations. The main problem I would find, was that as a pirate our guild would keep changing hot spots while I was off line. I would log in and be too far away to engage, or I would log in, find nobody, TP to manage a port and find myself stranded away from them when they did log in a couple of hours. I would have no problem with a "physical" TP cool down, and no ship TP of any kind, with the following conditions. I could manage my ports remotely, with purchase orders and shipping orders, without having to travel to them. Hell it would even be interesting if the orders had to travel on the OW, and reports come back, via AI travel, and have the possibility of even losing orders on route. I could order ships to travel without my needing to sail them. They hit the OW, take their chances with AI captains, and I lose crew limits until they dock, or crew/cargo/dura if they get caught. As long as the trade/crafting goods logistical game is tied to my characters presence to get things done, I don't want some of those things to be sea trucker. Ironically due to the "deliveries" system in place, I have set myself up to reduce sea trucker as much as possible, and in the process have made 90% of my cargo transport impossible to interupt. That's just wrong. That said, in the same way that PvE server players don't want to have to deal with PvP, I want to minimize my time doing PvE work in order to get to the PvP.

I know we disagree on this point, so I just wanted to comment that my "like" of your post did not include this particular view, just that the incessant bitching about pirates taking ports will simply shift to whatever nation is dominant, without the benefit of being able to complain about the color of the flag. Teleporting ships and or goods, -> bad Teleporting character/awareness, -> good. Take away the TP of captured ships, the invincible "deliveries" system, and force the use of at the very least, AI on the open world transport of everything that needs to move, and many of the problems go away. Port hopping to keep ahead of a player escape needs to be planned in advance as outposts need to be set up and stocked with ships, rather than a quick AI capture and jump. However if you take away the ability of players to use time effectively as they want, force them to be sea truckers, equals more players go away. I also think that with the new RvR mechanics a good deal of this jumping around for a fight will simply end regardless. If you want to push national agenda, then you will have to push it in a specific area, and not be running all over the whole map. Ironically, if you take ports from pirates they may even get worse than they are now. Without a port capture agenda, all they will do is shift to being full time conquest trolls, helping, hindering or preying on every active combat area on the map. I bet the bitching goes up, not down, when pirates can effectively become a second large ally of whomever they happen to choose, in every war on the map.

How incredibly short sighted. We elected to participate in an early access game, knowing full well the experience and learning would be sub par. I would argue that a "safe" zone should be exactly that, a safe zone that is clearly not a compressed version of the "real" world, but simply introduces the basics and mechanics. The safe zone should have a player life expectancy/entertainment value for 4-6 2 hour sessions, with an incentive for veteran players to use it as a recruiting ground. I would build it like this. A no nation selection when entering the training area. You get to pick one of two colors on the way in, which represents your nation. Chat channel dedicated to the area that is available to the whole server, so other players can help/talk to you. There is a level 3 cap on progress for both rank and crafting. The ports sell unlimited numbers of all shallow water ships. Ports have unlimited supplies to construct the shallow water ships, at lowest default sell price. There is a single consumption port in the middle of the map, that buys all products at a profit, and has unlimited consumption. An easy way to "build hostility" where a single fight will trigger an open port battle in 10-20 minutes. This will be a shallow water battle, with a single tower as the objective. Three specific port/zones that are always flipping sides, with no real strategic value. AI fleets of appropriate size, including trade ships with "special" high value goods. (To encourage learning how to capture) Same goods are used as rewards for a port battle. Easy to find, hold your hand tutorials on how things work. When you leave the first time, you select your nation by TP'ing to that capital with your XP, and a set amount of gold. You must support vet trainers that come in and help new players, while controlling/demotivating noob killer players. This can be controlled by simple means, by giving greater power to the new players that have no nation. Vets teleport in with no access to any outside resources, and are only able to purchase things the new player can. When you return you enter the zone with no Gold, and leave again with no Gold, The XP cap should keep the area from being an XP farm. If a players is a color, the damage is triple against players with a nation. If a nation player damages a color player, that damage in halved. Color players can have fleet. Vets can not have fleet. I think that would be a much better model than one that would see fully experienced players enter the area with both an experience and material advantage. I tried to imagine if I was helping someone, what could be done to make that feel challenging, and allow the new player to feel empowered. The Extra and less damage would give new players a sense of accomplishment, while the half damage would make many new players an entertaining challenge to vets. As "color only" instead of nation, it would also allow for players to actively recruit new players to a specific nation, rather than rely on random chance which tends to lean more towards actual nation in the real world, giving advantage to higher population/active countries by default. In my opinion, that's the way the new player area should be built.

It's not about 20xp, its about tears. The assumption that "experienced" players can't find pleasure in kicking someones ass for no other reason that to kick their ass, totally discounts the killer mindset. (See Bartles Taxonomy) "For others, it's more about power and the ability to hurt others or the thrill of the hunt. One such example is "ganking" or "owning", a process where the Killer takes their strong character to a place where inexperienced or weaker characters reside, and proceeds to kill them repeatedly. Once a killer finds a weaker character it becomes increasingly enjoyable to "Hunt" this character, stalking him through different zones." Considering how many forum posts are complaints about gank squads, who get little to nothing other than this very experience currently, thinking they won't visit it on new players in a place where they are easy to find, is rather short sighted. Even the 1v1 battle entry rules will not prevent squads of them from just sitting outside the battle zone waiting to re-tag the helpless noob if he does manage to prevail. Deciding if old players are allowed to enter the new player area, and what the chances are, or how that will impact the new player experience is completely on topic.

Are you serious? You have never heard of "smurfing" accounts? One of the top page hits for it on Google is an discussion/opinion on why it's worse for the game CS:GO than hacking. Now given how unique and novel the skills in NA are, and how much difference having them and not having them make in identically matched outcomes, how can you not understand why it would happen?

I was specifically talking about the assertion that "THE most important thing I ever teach new players is pre-planning. " That's not the "most important thing" to teach new players by any stretch. It may be a goal for a player trainer, but for the game itself the most important is the very basics. I also happen to think the whole goal of this new player area, while admirable, points to a few problems with the games design in general. Specifically. This sounds like the answer to players not being able to understand the game, is not to guild/play them through the learning process, but to cram even more information and identical complexity into a smaller area, and simply reduce the sailing requirement so as to create faster action and less dispersion of players. I think that "solution" ironically highlights a different problem. How to balance between wanting players to experience the "being lost at sea" aspect of OW sailing, and how that goal has created a barrier to the enjoyment of other core mechanics. It's clear from the compressed nature of the zone, that all they are doing in effect is to remove the "being lost at sea" part of the game, and cramming all the new players into basically a battle arena. The thinking possibly being, that if we give new players enough carrots (battle game play, ability to get rare resources) early, they will come to enjoy/tolerate the stick (being lost at sea), that is considered a critical objective of the game. Makes me think of this quote by Peter Drucker - "Culture eats strategy for breakfast".

I agree. Once I read through the thread on being sunk by leaks, I decided to spend some time deconstructing the skill against AI. Until that thread I did not really grasp how effective knowing how to water line hit an enemy was. In my experience I would get 1 or 2 leaks, take a bit of water, let the auto survival mechanic fill in the holes and then pump the water. Now that I know how it CAN be used, I have practiced and know how to set my sails to create the ideal list for both making and protecting against the shots. With hacks and cheats so common, and a massive over abundance of ego and special little snowflake treatment in the current education system, it's no wonder that the internet gaming community is filled to capacity with players who not only have a severe case of Dunning Kruger, but that even when presented with the evidence that they are not as good as they think they are, will pass blame onto game mechanics or cheating. It has been going on forever though, as it reminds me of the kids in the arcade that used to beat the shit out of the games when they lost a quarter cause they sucked.

That is pure garbage, new player tutorials are not strategy guilds, they are basic instructions. The most important thing a tutorial should be teaching players is the game mechanics and basics. What button opens what menu, how to turn a boat, how to raise/lower sails, how to tack against a wind, what do the crossed swords in the ocean mean, etc. The basics that every vet forgot that they even learned. (See Dunning Kruger effect) Part of the problem however with building a tutorial now, is that the interface is not finished. They can't build something to show the basics, because doing so now would be a waste of time, as they would have to do it again when the interface is polished. Now you could build the things you mentioned above in a second level of tutorials, which really should just be help/strategy guilds, but the idea that "THE most important thing I ever teach new players is pre-planning" is totally missing the first 30-50 hours of the game where you are just trying to figure out how to drive your ship and shoot your cannons in the right direction. You must start at the very beginning, not where you personally found difficulty.

I know from the experience of having one tag along in a larger fight, they can often have a hoot, driving around and just watching and being part of a large battle, just trying to keep from being turned into kindling. Us vets laughed our asses off as the poor guy got lined up for 3rate broadside. He seemed to be having fun too, actually survived.

How many dead/drowned siblings did he have? It's a stupid way to build a game, to throw people strait into the deep end and see who "survives" the experience. "Players should play through the actions they need to learn." "Don't front load your tutorial" "Make it fun". It's not a survival challenge.

Literally the first post in this thread by admin. Don't be lazy, go real all the comments that are already in the thread.

I would like to try different areas, but I think the population would have trouble supporting a bigger map. It would however be interesting if after the conquest win condition, whatever that is, it also forced a map reset into one of these other areas of the world.

If the route is already that short, isn't it rather trivial to leave port, look for sails, and if any danger is seen just pop back in anyway? Sure you couldn't blockade, but is there really that much hunting and or trade going on between those short trip ports as is? Seems like a small price to pay to end the much larger problem.

I agree with this, but I don't think we should have to be sea truckers. If you could hire AI to do that at the expense of gold and possibly lost crew and cargo, I don't see a problem with that.

You don't need more mechanics to be a pirate, you just need to act like one. Stop basing out of your capital. Always sail under the smuggler flag. Go into ANY waters looking for targets. I don't fight at my capital, I don't join PB's, and I get most of my resources from free ports, or trader capture. I usually hunt around free ports that I know have heavy national activity. Try to show up in unexpected places, at unexpected times, and waylay a trader or two. Got me a free Belle off a trader just a few days ago doing that. All this is possible under the current mechanics. Once again, players make different choices, and as long as they do, attempts to bottle them up will only do one thing, reduce the population on the servers. By the way, Admin has pointed out that pirates held more than 14 ports. They didn't get those handed to them, they had to take them, so saying pirates should not be in the port game is simply not accurate. Good for you. I would not personally restrict myself to one ship however, given the current population. I have a raider ship in ... 6 free towns, so I can take a peek around the port, and if I don't find what I am looking for, move to the next one. I would rather my game time be spent doing what I want, than to spend most of it looking for what I want, but if you enjoy only finding one good target every couple of game sessions, more power to you.

So in a multiplayer game, your solution is to attempt to isolate a group deliberately so that the game is difficult to play in the way they want to play it, in the exact opposite way good games facilitate the socializer (see Bartles Taxonomy types) player, a play type that makes up the bulk of a MMO player base. And you think that is going to keep players and make it more interesting? I am very glad you are not a game developer, although watching stupid social engineering attempts like that fail spectacularly may teach you something.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. - Peter Drucker. Fighting pirate unity is fighting a chosen culture. NO game mechanic will create disunity where unity is desired of the participants. In a game where every other nation is essentially and by game mechanics always against them, unity is the only logical outcome of the national strategy, for those that want a sense of tribal identity. If you strip the mechanics out of the game, they will simply move those mechanics somewhere else. Add obstacles, and they will over come them. It's a rather short sighted and ultimately pointless suggestion to try to force a wedge with one set of mechanics, while other mechanics encourage unity. The Devs just found out how bad culture and human nature can break the best of intended mechanics, with the event of two weeks ago. Your suggestion is tantamount to trying to drill a hole in water.

Part of the problem with "more skills" is in fact how few in number the actual skills to build a ship are. They did one hell of a good job with the construction parts and quantities in this game, as they relate to how they were done in the past. I have seen them post some of the historical ship yard construction notes as reference to both build costs, material required, and labor hours needed. They would have to look somewhere else for the kind of "skill" scale you are looking for. One place it could happen is in the BP drops. If a person had to devote X number of hours, or break apart X amount of ships to learning a BP, rather than the current RNG luck of the draw model, then there would be a reason to branch off skill wise. I previously posted a model like the McDonald's prize pieces, where ships always dropped a part of the blueprint, and you had to gather all the different parts to make a full BP. Add in a progression leveling so that in order to craft in the notes that upgrade a ship, you also needed to have upgraded your skills in crafting that particular type of ship, then that would be a more realistic model for "skill" progression. For example you have to build 5 basic Snows before you can build a Common version. Currently it is simply make an extra level and you can upgrade the ship. The barrier to entry is astonishingly small. I don't think they would be breaking their word to keep all XP since EA launch intact, if they were to add that additional layer of skill requirement to each ship type. Then getting the basic experience and BP would be the first step on making the epic GOLD modified Victory, and greatly reduce the amount of them that are available. They could also add in a similar requirement for the ship modules, so that you had to craft say 5 basic Rum Rations before you could make the Common variety. That would also reduce the current proliferation of all exceptional, all the time, of every component possible.

Admin has often called this game a sand box. Sandbox by its nature means that every player has the ability to use all the tools to do whatever they like, as opposed to an RPG where you assume the role of a specific race/class/character/style etc. The advantage of sandbox from a balance perspective is that it reduces the want/need/desire to build multiple accounts. Why have two accounts that have identical abilities, may as well just work on one? The disadvantage is that everyone is a super person, able to do many things, without the ability to distinguish one player from another by game mechanics. This leaves distinction down to player choice if they elect to specialize, or by skill because they have better/worse skills than average. They are two very different philosophies of game development, and neither is right or wrong in their own right. Like it or not, NA is at it's core a sand box. That's how it's design started, and that's the direction it keeps heading. If you want an RPG you will have to look somewhere else, because the two models do not mix well.