The Ghost of Sir Edward

How many players actually place contracts for ships with crafters? And what about crafters who want to build ships on speculation, or if they want to build a ship for themselves?

There is no point in reducing the number of trips for ship crafting. The players who you are targeting disdain crafting anyway. If you want more ships to be produced eliminate permits, and reduce the cost of blueprints, better yet, just sell the blueprints for gold instead of combat marks. Players who primarily craft also trade, and players who trade generally have plenty of gold to buy whatever they need. Players who devote themselves to PVP usually have the gold but do not craft on a regular basis and rarely trade. Ship prices are fine, In game I am not wealthy but find that prices for ships in the shop are low enough that losing any of them would not be a hardship. As a ship crafter i would say that one of the biggest impediments is labor hours. It would be extremely useful if labor hours could be purchased with gold from the ship's store or Admiralty. 1st and 2nd rate ships of the line should be rare and expensive, 3rd rates, 4th rates, Frigates, Merchant ships, etc, far less so. Resources are rarely a problem, in game, both clan and individual warehouses are full of shipbuilding mats, 6-8 different frame and planking woods, etc. I currently have enough mats on hand to build 3-4 frigates. Again, my biggest problem is labor hours. One issue with trading however, is that most ports have nothing to offer as far as building mats or trade goods, so there is no reason to visit them.Others might find this to be different, but I have little need to travel more than 150k from my Capital. If your looking for solutions you need to corectly identify the problem. Players are not leaving the game because there is no PVP, players are leaving the game because there is nothing but PVP. Outside of ganking and closed battles the game has very little content. When you insitituted the admiralty permit and blueprint system, you shut the traders, PVE and casual PVP players out of crafting, because they had to spend all their time doing missions or PVP to get combat marks to build the ships, or just not craft the better ships. An Indefatigable permit costs 50 combat marks, which translates to at least 10 combat missions, or 100,000 gold minimum, just to get permission to build it. The permit system alone makes the larger ships such an expenisve investment in time and effort that few are willing to risk them under anything but optimum conditions.

Give the game PVE content that will support players who are out in remote areas. If captains have something to do while waiting to see another player they'll be moe likely to have a postive experience and stay.

It is good to see that new players will finally receive some protection. I have talked to several new players over the past weeks during the game. They try to learn, but they don't know what to do, or how anything works and as a result quickly get frustrated. My only question would be how will these uncapturable regions be laid out on the map?

Yes the open world is tough, but instead of creating rules of engagement that favor the experienced player over a new player why not just use a simple solution. Instead of the care bear ROE in place now, make basic cutters off limits to PVP. No one can attack another player or be attacked by another player while sailing in one.

One change that the developers could impliment would be to change the ROE to where they actually seemed logical. If a BC can be attacked by a first rate, than a BC should be able to attack a first rate. Having the current ROE is basically telling new players that they are their for the amusement of others.

I would disagree with part of this. As it stands now the game is enjoyable during the initial character buildup, but once you have made your first million in gold, built your outpost and associated buildings, and crafted your first major ship the game becomes somewhat boring and a little tedious. Why? because there is nothing to do and there is no reason to do it. If your an individual or you are in a small clan, you have few options to do anything meaningful in game. The larger clans generally don't discuss their plans in national chat, so RVR is difficult to get involved with unless your in the right place at the right time. PVP is hard to find unless your in the center of the map, and for most players that means they are far from home and any support. Trading is repetitive, risky and and can be an enormous time sink with little to do during the long voyages. Most ports in the game have nothing to offer as far as trade, materials or combat opportunities and the ones that do are usually so infested with enemy players that you must assume you will lose your ships and any cargo you might have. You've focused the game on PVP, but I wonder if the PVP players will ever be satisfied with anything you do. And in the meantime I think you have lost a substantial portion of the game population who might want something more than just PVP.

Make every port in every region individually capturable. This will spread activity across the chart, but it will also encourage smaller war companies to form and in the long run encourage more PVP across the OW.

I still have not seen a reasonable response by anyone to the question of how PVP would be managed when players from a hostile nation take control of your own nation's capital port or regional ports. If La Habana, Cartagena, etc. are controlled by a hostile foreign nation's war clan, and they are able to use those Spanish ports as bases for thier own clan members, what protection would spanish players, particularly the newest ones, have from being constantly harassed, ganked or otherwise molested by fleets of hostile ships based in their own home waters? The admin mentioned that new players joining spain left within 1-2 days, how would this new system reduce that attrition rate, and how would it increase the playability and most especially the enjoyment of the game for new players coming online for the first time? Designing a game for a small group of hardcore PVP/RVR fanatics is not necessarily a bad idea, but there does need to be a mechanism in place that allows a new player to experience success within the game's OW and not just a string of frustrating defeats. A possible answer to this problem that would be both simple and historically accurate would be the use of the guardship. Each port could be assigned a group of guardships based on the size and importance of the port itself. A national capital would have perhaps 2-4 ships of the line and 2-4 frigates as guardships. Regional capitals might have half of this number and smaller ports a single frigate only. These ships would be permanenetly, and visibly anchored (or somehow restricted) so that they would at all times remain in close proximity to the port entrance. Thier function would be to prevent or at least help mitigate bad behavior by foreign war companies against the host nations shipping and would give new (and old) players some protection from attack by foreign war companies as they enter and leave harbor. These ships would also help protect the interest of the war companies themselves by detering individual company captains from going rogue and disrupting the trade and corresponding tax base of the port.

Please excuse my double post, but a question came up on me from astern. I am sailing in my Spanish frigate to my port in Mariel. Mariel is under the governance of a pirate war clan. How do I go home without getting my ship shot out from under me?

The new War clan will become the dominant form of organization in NA. Since membership in a war clan will give exclusive access to port battles, very few new or current players will have any interest in joining or remaining within the current clan system and thereby removing themselves from a significant portion of the game's content. That said, if the creation of a war clan is a simple straight forward process, i.'e. an individual pays a fee and receives a charter and then it's up to them to organize a company that's viable, then it could be a good substitute for the current system. On a related note, new player expereince would be drastically improved if basic cutters captained by Guardiamarina or their foreign equivilents were removed from PVP altogether, both in attack and defense, there are far too many baby seals being clubbed to death.

After I wiped my character and restarted I don't think the grind is particularly bad. The BC is a pleasure to sail and fight. Trade and smuggling are reasonable. NPC ship capture is back, with traders that are up gunned and more challenging. The only downside is that the BR system can really impede some good game content from taking place. If I had a complaint it would be that there is a lack variety in the PVE content on the PVP servers. There isn't always an enemy player to contend with so I am often left to fend for myself. The combat missions are repetitive and somewhat boring. Once you have developed a method of dealing with an AI opponent it is fairly easy to reuse those methods to consistently win. The combat missions themselves would be more interesting if they were actually scenario driven with a storyline behind them or perhaps if there was the option to conduct a series of related missions with a bonus reward for completing them all within a certain time frame.

Your working on the assumption that in business honesty is the most important element in customer relations. This is false. In business timeliness and accuracy are the most important elements. Modern customers rarely appreciate or forgive honesty, particularly when it relates to missed deadlines or perceived mistakes. They do however respond well to consistency and accuracy. The developers cannot control innovation, but they can control what they tell the NA community and when it is told. I am not faulting the developers for communicating with the players but I am suggesting that their openness in revealing schedules and timetable is unnecessary and even harmful, particularly when bad game reviews and low server populations are a result.

I would suggest no longer giving any updates on wipes or patches to the live servers until they are actually finished and ready to deploy. And then just 24 hours in advance before they go online. I realize that the devs are trying to be open and informative but unfortunately many people are instant gratification types that are unaccepting of delays or reasoning.

Yeah. I think I misspoke. Pandora is supposed to be made available on release, maybe before. I do remember reading will get four redeemable ships, but now I can't even find where I read it at.

We are supposed to get four redeemable ships after wipe, including at least one frigate, the Pandora. But yes, if LGVs are available in the shop, I'll sell the redeemables and take four of those.

An East Indiaman would be very nice, but not legit for the caribbean. Anyone know if crafting XP is safe after the wipe or is only rank XP?

Why would they need to require permits to get an LGV or Indiaman?

Folks need to get off the devs backs about the timetable for the wipe. Anyone who has played NA for 5 minutes can tell that they are putting a lot of work into this game. It's early release Alpha, i.e. it's not finished yet. If you want to complain, give them to critics about some of game features if you have any. Speaking of which.... I've noticed that in OW my T-lynx or cutter has a difficult time evading certain frigates that are in pursuit. Even if my ship is laden I should be able to haul to windward and escape, yet somehow on several occasions I have not been able to do so. The surprises just sweep in behind me and I'm entered into the battle screen.