Arctander

No, because wants and needs are different things.

Its been almost a month w/o any posts in this thread, but people keep liking it and taking he poll - presently 98% of people think that a change to the wind system would be good... but no reply from a dev or moderator about this (at least that I've seen) My suggestion to tweak the system would be a VERY simple modification to it - some of the other ideas I think are also very interesting, though to implement, more complicated and would have a greater impact on game play. Either way, could we maybe get a single official person to say something here? Even just a "no" would be at least let us know that they're reading the forums.

Huge mistake. Really disappointed. The reason that the middle upgrades are infrequently used is that the investment in building them is not rewarded (because of the limited spaces in shop slots.) And there are definitely some upgrades that are good for different ships too. If you set it so that each level took something like 2x as many notes to produce, the exceptional would be much more expensive and only the wealthiest players would use them. Then you would get a lot more if the middle quality having a value. Please rethink this devs. As to the rest of the stuff, I think it is very pre-mature, since we have hardly had enough time to test things out since the last big patch which as made resource gathering a MUCH tougher experience.

I have participated in a lot of alphas/betas over the years, most of them requiring pre-orders of the game. Almost all of them did a full content wipe on release. It can be disappointing to watch your hours that you invested in a game disappear with a release, but I fully expected that was what would happen here. I was stunned the other day to hear that was not the plan. I expected something like a nice little reward ship - like a Frig or a Brig... but other than that, a clean slate. Either way, if not playing "another 1500 hours to reach XP is not enjoyable for you" - well that says a lot about if you're enjoying the full game experience or not. If you're not, then chances are good you're going to be bored and quit out soon anyway. As to the "empty server warnings" - anytime a game releases, if they do their marketing right... the server populations increase 10 fold. Relying on those of us from alpha/beta to be their main population would mean that the game has been a major failure - and I'm sure it wouldn't continue to be supported by the developers for long if that was the case.

Hey Devs, how about locking this thread because it is so old now, and maybe starting a new one seeking to move forward from there? Just a thought.

Agreed! Risking officer lives discourages PvP

Agreed, anything that varies it more will make more interesting and force players to react and deal with it.

I love the idea, though my thought would be the number of officers you have will vary by ship size. Large ships needed more officers and more crew. Higher ranking officers appear on larger ships, and have a MUCH greater value - though the highest ranking officers would not be any better (and perhaps a little weaker) than the current single officers we have. I would also wish that only the top ranked officer on any ship is allowed to be moved, the lower officers all stay with the ship. That way the captain can bring his best friend, however you can't just pull all the officers around. So, a 1st or 2nd rate would have 5 officers, a 3rd rate 4, a 4th 3, 5th 2 and a 6th 1. Either way, I do love the idea. I also wish we could see a captain on the deck moving around. Just one character in a silly hat and a colorful uniform

Yes, but I would like for an option to have it as your main (chat) clock as well. Should be SUPER easy to give us that option/control.

It might make it a bit easier to be aware of when port battles and events are coming up if everyone is on the server time, rather than their own personal local time. Shouldn't be too hard to give that option as a little check box. Please...

While I would love to see some real depth to the wind system. Things like off shore wind, or wind speed are really cool ideas. And realistic wind definitely has an interesting appeal too (hurricane season anyone?) However, my original suggestion should be a very easy thing to implement - and though it wouldn't include nearly the variety that all the other suggestions have, at least it would include SOME variety. Which would be a great addition IMO.

Perhaps, but the changes to game politics, combat mechanics, etc... will take a LOT more work to implement, tweak and balance out. My suggestion is something that would be a relatively easy thing to code into the game. Making it as complicated as you suggest with current & storm damage is a significant change from simply adding in some variation to wind direction rather than the static system in place now.

It is a very small polling group for sure, but the fact that it is 100% says that it is an issue in the game design. Either way, I. glad the topic had gotten more discussing at least.

You think so? I think it's boring. And interesting to see that 100% ofthe people polled want to change from the current system.

I definitely don't want it to be that realistic, this is a game, it needs to be fun.

I'm not clear if your sarcasm is aimed at my suggested changes, or our the current steady wind, but all games are a balance of realism and playability. In the real world sometimes the wind speed varies too, even dies off completely. And all ship durability values are 1. Only a rare bird might want that in a game.

I just want variety, and too much realism definitely can sap the fun out of things, I would be opposed to playing it as historically as you are suggesting.

My suggestion is not to keep it in one direction for any length at all. I would have the current, slow and steady clockwise rotation, but it would simply to give it some chance of being unpredictable occasionally. Definitely not static! And the devs could set it so that if the "random shift" happened, then it can't happen for a half, or full hour, whatever is needed, so it isn't always wildly shifting. I fully understand that there needs to be a balance to fun vs realism, I just find the predictable nature of the current system to be very boring and very unrealistic. A occasional variation (that isn't too impactful) would be a welcomed change IMO.

How about every 15 minutes there's a "check" when the wind is going to move, where 25% of the time it takes an entirely random shift to any other direction. If 25% is too much, try 20% or 5% or whatever... but SOMETHING so that it isn't so static and boring. Just something to vary up the wind so it simply doesn't circle around the map. In the history of sailing, good or bad fortune regarding the wind sometimes had a huge impact on battles, and that is one thing totally lacking in this game.

For those who have problems loading the map (and I get the error in Firefox on both the original & Anolytic's one) I have downloaded, resized it from 8000px wide to 4000px and added a map legend to it. So hopefully this link works for you too. Hrm, it seems that the server resized the image smaller, here is the "large" sized version: http://ob1design.com/temp/NA/NA-map-new-large.jpg

Will, outstanding guide, thanks for the effort create it!

Agreed 100% - there has to be some where in the middle. Most gamers would rather win easy than lose in a close and hard fought match. So encouraging people to not just join the hoard side is going to be a tough selling point and developers will HAVE to find out some methods to reward players who are the underdogs. I'm not sure what is the best way to do handle it, but something relating to the difficulty of supply and/or maintaining control over a growing area are two ways that many games handle it. Hopefully there is some way to balance it and keep it all interesting and fun.

I have not read ask the replies, and I'm sure it it's a contentious discussion, but it sounds like a terrible idea to me. The game already has almost nothing to stem the slippery slope mechanic, and this new idea will only make that worse. A huge mistake IMO, and something which is enormously limiting to anyone who does want to just be a part of a horde.