Rhodry Heidenrich

The notion of wanting to cater to players with the "Disney Pirate" fantasy seems dubious. I'm suspicious that those types of players probably don't have any longevity and may not be worth fussing over. They'll figure out that this game isn't about instant gratification and will move on to Sea of Thieves or Skull & Bones. Pirates being an easy-mode Nation, and the desired void for a "Pirate like" faction being filled by Russia/Poland/Prussia is just so strange. Nation building players should play in Nations and those of us who want to scratch out a living away from the drama, egos and tomfoolery of RvR should be the ones flying The Black.

A lame excuse if I've ever seen one (if that's what they actually said). The Pirate faction should have been --from the start-- what Prussia/Russia/Poland are, and those same nations should have never been put into the game. But it's a moot point, really.

Since dead threads don't say no.. Log in. Choose Pirate. Figure out UI. Set Sail. Attack some AI to figure out combat. Navigate my way to another island. Log out, forget about game for 8 months.

Let me join in on the idea of Lionshaft being the V.P of anything.

As an opportunist, I now take an opportunity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOBi9nYdZLk

@Sir Texas Sir, All I'm looking for is some people to sail around with and get into OW skirmishes, and do what I've always liked to do in group fights which is use a fast/maneuverable ship to "tackle" for the bigger boys. Outside of that, I've always been a privateer at heart. But, all of it is moot if after the merge the server population isn't any different during my play times than it is now on Global.

I'm looking at the EU map and thinking about where I'm going to go. First and foremost, I want to see what the server population is during the evening US Pacific time.

This, this right here. Population would solve a lot of the problems NA OW has, but the problem is the game just doesn't have what it takes to entice the number of players needed for it to flesh itself out. Plain and simple, if we had the population the OP wouldn't have thought to post such a ludicrous suggestion. Why? Because he'd be up to his eyeballs in all of the PvP he could want, and he wouldn't be bored enough to get slapped by the "Good Idea Fairy". (Always beware the Good Idea Fairy, as the suggestions this little sprite often plants in people's minds are anything but good).

Don't mind Simon. I think he has three wives, about fifteen kids, and lives in a one room studio. That kind of insanity is enough to make anyone a little crabby every now and then.

I agree, if they want RvR to be a large component to this game, it needs to have more depth to it and Privateers who contract to the highest bidder would be a good addition to the game. I'd certainly hope that Game Labs would do a better job of balancing those type of mechanics. PGI has failed miserably in that regard which is one of the reasons why Faction Play in MW:O is such a god awful mess. Almost all of the heavy hitting units in MW:O are Mercs who spend most of their time on the same side of the "conflict", where they mercilessly farm PuGs. But, a lot these ideas are moot because they can't be properly tested for balance without there being a healthy population. That's not going to happen until we finally can bring everyone into the same pool. Hard to do when there's still a group of loud mouthed cryhards who can't understand that this is a GLOBAL game, and that having restrictive RvR windows is stupid. Especially when those windows only "benefit" players in one or two time zones, and leave everyone else out in the breeze. I'm not really into RvR, but that doesn't mean I don't want it to be fun for those who do.

I kind of scratched my head a little bit when I saw the mechanics for the new nations, when those mechanics would have been great to give to Ze Pyrates. The last map reset would have a good time to do it as well.

Unlike the last patch, I'm going to wait until I see what the overall reception is before I bother with it. Not interested in playing in a ghost town again.

"We want meaningful RvR that has some depth and possibly a real reason to take/defend ports!" "What the crap? We might be inconvenienced by some "depth" and "meaning" to RvR? This sucks!"

I played Vanilla, and it was more fun before... well it turned into what it is today. I was definitely making a modern day comparison.

You've brought up WoW a couple of times. Look, PvP in WoW is not the same as PvP in Naval Action. Open world PvP in modern day WoW is a laughing stock footnote because it's idiotically imbalanced, and there's pretty much no reason to do it. The reward for beating down some poor sod is the mere satisfaction that your class was able to two shot theirs. The only thing anyone loses in a gank is 30 seconds of time, so there doesn't need to be any kind of "participation trophy". OW PvP in WoW has no impact on anything, at all, which is why it's not exactly a selling point for the game. "You should come play World of Warcraft! The open world PvP is amazing" --- Nobody, Ever Meanwhile, in the game you're doing a great job of sailing off of the edge of the world to become a forgotten footnote in time (which is sad, because I actually like the game), Open World PvP is one of the focal points. One of the issues with OW PvP is a lot of players are unwilling to fight unless they know they're going to win, which is why ganks and seal clubbing are so prevalent. Getting absolutely nothing on top of what you lose when you sink in this game is counter incentive to want to PvP. I don't think anyone here feels that the losing captain should get anything that resembles the rewards the winner gets. I doubt many people feel that you should be able to "lose" your way to affording a 1st rate. The sentiment is, however, that given the time investment this game requires to be able to be functional within it, some kind of reward should be present for everybody as a way to keep people willing to re-equip and try again.

In this new system the devs are putting on the table for us, PvP players should have little reason to be hanging out near Capital regions (unless to do econ or some missions of their own), so who cares if they're little PvE heavens. I'm perfectly OK with some "high sec" zones that may help with new player retention which, I hope, will lead to more people getting into both OW PvP as well as RvR. It's a better alternative to what we have now which is Capital Camping™ as a commonplace sport. A whole clan of new players on Global was turned off to the game because they couldn't attempt to grow/expand without being clubbed by bored ass old-timers. Take the broader view. It's what the devs are trying to do in an attempt to plug some of the holes in this sinking ship.

What the shit?

First, there will always be cowards no matter how cheap PvP becomes. That's not really the issue, though. I noticed the largest drop off in OW PvP when the Fine Wood/Regional Bonus debacle happened. That's when I finally put the game down and took and extended break. People who would normally have fought, were tucking tail and running because the thought of replacing that now expensive 3/5 Meta Ship™ was too much. Meanwhile I was sailing in something cheap to replace, but got few fights anyway. A higher cost (be it real or perceived) has an absolute impact on people's willingness to engage in risky play, and PvP is risky play. Even worse when as the game sits right now, the return of investment on PvP can be abysmal.

@Mike the Mongel Have two glasses of wine. You're not you when you're sober.

After having some questions of mine answered both in the open and in private, I've got more of a picture with which to continue to give my two coppers on the state of the game, server population, and all that jazz. Boils down to most of us, despite what our preferred PvP activity is, wanting a more meaningful and entertaining PvP game that brings both the OW centric and RvR centric groups together more often than they are now. I think frustration with the state of the game is producing a lot of salt, my own included.

I RvR'd quite a bit awhile back when it was done to dig up actual PvP, which has been a long time now (Editing this in to clarify: Think back to when we'd pull PB flags and didn't really care if the PvP happened in or outside of the port. What mattered was the fights, location irrelevant). Since the wipe? No, not really because I find grinding NPC fleets for hostility to be exceptionally boring, and despite that I did actually come do some contention grinding despite my distaste for it. I came to Savannah under the misguided notion that I'd get to do some screening PvP for the 1st rates. But, we know how Savannah went and I wound up having zero reason to be there. Also, I have not owned anything above a 5th rate since before the wipe. Wasn't going to take up slots in PB's that would be better suited for someone with a meta-ship anyway. Never asked for one because I had zero intent of participating in port battles so I wasn't going to ask for something I wouldn't use. The only 1st rate I've ever had was a Victory 7grams gave to me not long after the hostility patch, because I was coming to hostility missions in a Constitution, you know.. a ship I actually liked. When it comes to OW PvP I prefer to do it solo, and I don't like camping capitals which is what BLACK was doing to the US after the Savannah port battle. I did some with the clan there for a day or so until I got tired of seal clubbing. Outside of that, I did contribute to the clan by putting half of the econ materials I produced into the clan warehouse, and I know full well that you probably recall me giving you labor contracts while asking for exactly dip-squat in return (although I did make a joking comment about extracting repayment to you, once). Other than that, I did what amused me which wasn't pounding empty PB's for ports that don't matter. Anyway, I don't need glasses man, though I appreciate the offer. Perhaps at Christmas you can get me a bag of peanuts. I like honey roasted. Really don't think there is some kind of paranoia inducing scheme behind the idea Teutonic offered. I don't know the guy that well, but he's never struck me as being that petty. Other than that I do agree with you (despite seeing some irony in it..) about camping capitals and not really wanting a big PvP-centric area being created near Mortimer town. You're looking out for your own which is something I'd not piss in your cheerios about. Also agree with you on things such as ship-skill unlocking. I STILL don't have more than two slots on any of my preferred ships unlocked for the same reason I'm still not max level. I...hate...grinding (see:hostility). I also hate the RNG nature of getting skill books, too. RNGesus has been extremely unkind to me when it comes to those things.

@Sir Texas Sir, Thanks for the answer, but for me it just paints a pretty bleak picture. A couple of decent fights over the span of a couple of months pinpoints how uninviting RvR is in its current incarnation, and I understand why. Outside of Conquest/Victory marks (or whatever the hell they're called these days) there's no actual reason to do it. The only people who get hurt by being "one regioned" are new players who haven't figured out the game. Meanwhile, veteran players are bored and trying to find reasons to actually log in and play... which brings us to the original intent of this topic. It's too bad it couldn't have remained without the poo flinging, so shame on the guilty parties for that. @Bach As of this post it's 9pm Pacific time and I just logged into the EU server, and wow.. 73 players online. I'd have to see how the player population is on a weekend during this time to see if I'd even consider switching to that server. Honestly, having 160ish online at this time of night on Global is a hell of a lot more appealing, and although I think your idea has some merit behind it-- it would require a pretty large chunk of the Global population to decide to do it too.. and as STS has said, there are some players who probably have no interest in playing with really crappy pings or dealing with lag spikes.