Angus McGregor

Wow - this got a lot of attention fast. Here comes the knee jerk "I'm outta here" reactions... "No no no!!! Why? Because I paid for this game and you can't take my stuff from me." You paid for early access to be able to play in a TEST environment. Stop whinging about rights to pixels and help the devs test or take a hike. Especially if you've never used the F11 key. (Anyone takes offense to that then I wasn't talking about you - okay?) "Ship production will now be zero - our ships are now useless" Only if everyone stops playing, and that ain't gonna happen. Really having to restrain myself from being atrociously sarcastic. "You didn't give fine woods a chance or balance costs right" Do we really *need* 5 levels of ship quality? Really? Is losing that gonna totally ruin your life/day/NA experience? You can't just take all our ships away and leave us with basic cutters!" The only other times I've seen where players were going to "lose" assets, they were compensated or accommodated in some way. Calm down. Geez. This will kill all activity for the next 2-3 months? Why? A LOT of people won't stick with a game any longer than that anyway. Stop worrying People shouldn't be given special ships for winning tournaments! What on earth does that have to do with this proposal? NO! From crafters currently asking obscene prices for gold ships. (If you are offended by this... I AM talking about you.. okay?) A reasonable request for clarification... There really are a few of these but they are very much in the minority. Thumbs up from me!! Brace yourself - the personal insults for being a sycophantic buttkisser.. too stupid to think this through... insert non relevant disparaging remark you can think of here... They be coming!! And I can predict with 90% accuracy who will be flinging them. (If you are insulted by this - why?) IMHO simplifying the ship quality levels is a good thing. making ships more personal through customization is a good thing. will it do away with the fine woods approach? Dunno - don't care. I do hope the devs do a materials wipe too so the release day economy situation can be tested at the same time

This ^^^ Well done! Suggestion responded to and laid to rest. I know this kind of interaction probably takes your attention away from other important duties but it is much appreciated.

I'd like to see some basic OW battle exit/Combat mission entry issues adjusted/tested before any of these.

Wow... I can't express how wrong I hope you are, for all the excellent reasons given by OP. Whether it happens in a week or a month to allow more large action testing... IMHO a wipe definitely needs to happen that is whatever the devs are planning for the release. And yeah - it needs to happen at least 3 months before the release. If that reveals major issues, adjust - rinse and repeat as necessary. I'm not doubting that the backlash will be nuclear. But this is EA and GameLabs' goal must be to be ready for release, not pander to players who feel entitled to keep their goodies right up to release day. Chances are they will simply leave then anyway saying it isn't worth the grind to start over, and there's this new MMO that has caught their eye... If that's their attitude, jettison the baggage now and get your project ready for release. I've been looking for a viable MMO successor to Seadogs for ages and I think Naval Action is showing real promise.

I guess we'll agree to disagree. I envy you if you've never run into a game that had a frustrating interface.

I'd be shocked if NA went to full release before the end of the year. This next patch is just too massive a change to try to skate by on a few months testing. To say nothing of the final UI design feedback.

I think I read that the plan is to have AI fleets being more territorial, with each nationality's AI fleets sticking to regional waters that belong to them. Hopefully this will reduce the number of ships just tooting around in OW. Which while currently providing a very target rich environment, is not realistic at all. Hopefully the population of AI fleets/ships will also scale to the average player activity per server.

I like the general direction this suggestion is going. Especially NPC OW AI. It's just wrong that you are in NO danger from the NPC warships of the nations you are currently at war with and their traders have absolutely no fear of you. The whole question of the purpose of NPC traders seems to on point too. I've been told in another thread that they are just eye candy and don't really do anything. Seems pinata is a good description of them. I've already made my thoughts known on port economies, yes - development within, deliveries to a port should expand its market activity.

True - you are absolutely correct.

I know this is a very old thread, but it addresses an issue that really breaks the immersion for me. Callaghan and z4ys are absolutely right - there should NOT be water drops on a non-existent windshield or camera lens in the standard OW view. Telescope view is fine, a glass surface is involved. And yes, it would be nice if it were the random spatter that is in the standard view and not a set pattern that never changes.

Blinks, shakes head, blinks again. I can only guess that first sentence is referring to being able to stay in the BS screen after a battle. And then the last sentence is talking about being dragged back to the original battle entry point. But I'm only guessing between the lines.

I saw what you wrote and frankly didn't give it much weight. Of course there will be people who have poor internet performance from time to time. I certainly do in the evenings during prime video streaming time. My ping goes north of 300 and my speeds often drop off to <15Mps down and 4 Mbps up. Do I expect anything to be done to accommodate my intermittent issues? Not hardly. Again, in the constantly bad Aussie case, why aren't you arguing strongly for relocating PvP2 to the west coast or even better... Hawaii. I'll volunteer to maintain the server myself at a very reasonable rate. If you had said that there are some people who always have pings in the 500's to PvP1. How many? If there's anything I've learned about forum participation, its that the loudest voices are usually not representative. And even if it is more than a few, are we all to just shrug and say "Well then, nothing can be done if it will adversely affect anyone. We'll all just have to suffer together." Frankly it isn't the end of the world to lose a battle or two to things beyond our control. Especially if it means more battles for everyone one who wants them. As has been said, the server populations are reaching the point that IS is effecting participation and likely affecting the quality of testing. I'll be charitable and say that I'm having a hard time understanding those who want to maintain the status quo.

You may be overestimating my abilities... I was about to say that they cause me grief in the Admiralty missions, especially if I choose the level equal to my rank. But then I'm not usually trying to flee so that's not the point you were making. Still - please keep it in mind.

While tooting around the PvE OW in my fully laden merchant ship, it struck me as very odd and a bit sad that I had absolutely no fear of the ships around me. Yes, PvE automatically means I have no reason to fear other players (not that I encounter many in PvE OW). But all these NPC ships are surely part of the 'E' in PvE. My suggestion is... An infrequent chance of merchant ships (even in a fleet) being targeted by an NPC pirate ship/fleet. Traders would need to be wary of any ship on an intercept course in OW. Ships of any nation may be pirates flying false colors. And of course the matches would need to be balanced to give the player a fighting chance. Warships or fleets without traders need not worry. Pirates are greedy, not stupid. The PvE server is a nice sandbox to play in, but actually a bit bland. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want my merchant ships to be jumped every time they left port. But just the chance that this Pickle overtaking me is up to no good would bring a little bit of excitement that is currently missing.

No, in reality this "satisfaction" with ultra low ping rates is an illusion. The difference in game play between ping timing 30 and 130, even 230 is insignificant as long as it's consistent. If you don't believe that then I guess the Aussie players may as well rage quit playing right now. The reality is that human reaction time to visual stimulus is around 250 ms. Any results that seem better than that is caused by anticipation of events, and your system will adjust to compensate for consistent causal lag.

It sure would be refreshing for a certain segment to stop citing ping rates >100 as a reason they'd stop playing NA. It may be game-breaking for a lot of first person shooters, but it's a total strawman argument here. It isn't significant or even detectable 99% of the time. Kindly stop squawking about an extra 1/10th of a second delay ruining your day. I could easily make an argument that more lag makes the game much more realistic. There's no precision electronic fire control in the age of sail. It was squinting through acrid smoke, officers yelling, yanking firing lanyards, gunpowder igniting and a hefty metal ball being ejected from an ill-fitting smooth bore barrel on a pitching and rolling deck.

Turning our backs on this is not an option, the current situation is game breaking for more than a few and *must* be corrected. I'm left wondering why something drastic hasn't already been done to stop the relentless harassment of players who've had the nerve to win a match. Well said. Everyone needs to take a step back and actually think about why the number of players on all servers is dropping and the Devs are having to merge the remaining ones. To badly paraphrase a famous speech... "Ask not how you can exploit this game at the expense of others, but ask how you can ensure the game will be enjoyed by the greater number. If you aren't willing to do that, then who should listen to you? Frustrate enough people and the servers will be down to one, and then none. Solutions have been suggested that are reasonable. A combination of some may be required. A forced exit of the battle screen 3-5 minutes after resolution, coming out into Open World at a random point near where the battle concluded, with a 2.5 min grace period to log off or dash to port. The revenge aspect simply isn't nearly as important as preserving the community of the players and the future of the game.