Slim McSauce

It's not enough to repair the rudder, urgent repair should do 5-10% sails and 5-10% internal structure.

Now that I'm using the perk I really like it, but it suffers from the same thing as fleet 1 perk did in that, in no way is it some special ability to be able to find yourself on the map. Each ship of the time had a sextant and multiple people trained to use it. As a perk it does not fit. It should be a regular ability.

1000xp daily login mission for to redeem a special daily login chest

Unity is fine. Don't let the size of the post throw you off, it's mostly pretense. The idea it'self is very simple. When it applies, create more than one instance so if a group of of hundreds meat on OW the size outside more seamlessly transitions into battles. If you have 50v50 you don't want two 25v25's, you should want 3 17v17's give or take. The benefits are that you can have larger groups sizes on OW fighting each other. You leave a bit of room in each battle so reinforcements can join which gives more flexibility to when you get 100 or more players in the same area. You don't want to max out the instances one by one, you want to lay the battle first and give players the choice to reinforce. It's how it work work if there was no limit, you would just join the battle regardless. This is the only possible work around since we cannot raise the limit per instance above 50.

Short version? Come on now. You know better Norfolk. Your wife is a nice lady when she cooks!-slim

The game is not optimized for more than 25v25. In a 30v30 scenario you have 4 groups instead of 2, two tags instead of one which result in worse balance due to the first battle being immediately locked down, and the second battle being a mere 5v5 and those battles not being interconnected in any way which makes for group play above 25 more difficult that it should be. With less steps all the player has to do is group up and make the tag, the instancing will make 2 instances of 15v15 instead of 25v25 I 5v5. This scales upwards so even in the case of large 50v50 face offs you get 3 instances of (17v17) -2 in one of the battles. Which actually makes room for another 50 whole players to join as reinforcements within the 3 instances of that one battle. You just don't get that sort of optimization without a system like this. Players can't group up according to what the enemy brings to optimize battles, put it to the design and it will do it better than any of the players could. Not to mention port battles with this system would blow the current one out of the water. If each of 3 Pb instances had a limit of 7 1st rates, OR 15 SOL's and the rest 4ths and below. Your clan who would've brought 20 1st rates anyway to your PB would still do that, spread amongst 3 battles instead of all being dumped into one, and on top of that each side has like 30 slots PER PB for smaller ships of the line. AND ON TOP OF THAT another 25 slots for 4th rates and below. Tell me that isn't better than the 15v15 SOL and like 2 frigate PB screenshots posted.

Why yes! Turns out by incredible coincidence that the release of NA is taking place within the matter of days! This will surely generate the much needed boost in population.

I doubt your doubt. It's really no more than an ROE change. If tag number is greater than the value x then add an instance and split teams by a factor of .5-.75 with minor change to some UI in the cross swords menu. It should be elementary coding for the developers. It's whether or not they feel this is worth the time and effort to add (which I think it is). Thank you for your support.

Not sure if you noticed by most F2P games have Subscriptions on the side. Yes subscription-locked is outdated but subscriptions are usually fine, especially in economies where you can buy the subscription time through in-game currency.

ok just f2p then. servers need money at some point you need cash flow.

If not there's always F2P/subscription which is pretty much guaranteed customers.

Prelude Ok so you've heard this before. NA is an MMO it relies on large numbers of player interacting with each other, including battles. We have a hardware limit of 50 players per battle instance, this means battles cap out at 25v25 which is less than that of most Arena-style games. Granted NA is a bit more than just a gun model on a screen, the engine isn't great but the graphics are pretty nice so we live with it. We aren't going to get passed the 50 player limit in instance, but there are ways to make it feel to the player as if there is no limit. Starting with a problem that NA faces pretty exclusively. Similar games such as E.V.E or Albion, manage to much larger degree for various reasons, to fit possibly hundreds of people in the same area fighting each other. This is not exactly new for MMO's, rarely do battles get above 100v100 in these scenarios but the point is it is possible and that's what makes these games great. Similarly these games also do Region v Region, Zone v Zone, Faction warfare, whatever you want to call it. It's the bread and butter of these games, it's the stand out of these MMO's and the driving force behind the economies and clans. You may look up youtube videos for biggest battles, and these games will come up. NA on the other hand, there is no "biggest battle" per se. Port battles are more MOBA than they are MMO which creates this problem of disconnect between OW and Instance. You may have 100 people on the OW ready to fight in a PB, but only 25 will ever "get in" to the battle. There's no expanding the limit, there will never be perfectly seamless integration between the OW and Instance to give us unlimited battle sizes. We won't get the natural fluidity of command 100 guys into the fray like you do in E.V.E or Albion or any other game. There are work around's though that I think are worth exploring that could translate the MMO aspect from OW into Instanced battles. Introduction This is the simplest and easiest method to do so, details and all. Limits in games destroy immersion. Hardware or design set. The problem with a limit is as soon as you touch it the illusion the limit is trying to protect is drastically destroyed. Take the speed cap for example. It's there to prevent ships from reaching unrealistic speeds. Problem with showing off such a hard limit of 15.5knts is that you know once you hit that limit then you're the fastest ship in the game, which destroys the game. How so? If a game is trying to say ships can't go more than 15.5 knts because of real life physics, then you have a ship hit 15.5knts with room to spare then you've just shown that your limit is too small. Really the physics in game allow ships to do 16.5 knts if there was no artificial top end. In that case you find the natural limit within the game's own physics or design. Really my Renomee could be doing 16 knts were it not for the limit, but it's not the limit that's the problem it's the physics, if you take the fastest possible build of ship and it's over 15.5 knts then your limit does not match up to the physics you designed within the game. It's like having a top speed limiter in your car, 120mph but you're packing 500 buff horses. It's not the natural limit and you will notice that bottleneck in the design of the car. Summary Here we actually do have a hardware limitation, not artificially placed, it's an actual limit we don't have any say in. 25v25 is our limit in the instance, this is not a design choice it's what our technology can handle within stable margins for the majority of people. So the question is how can we use design to mitigate the hardware limitation? First lets be honest, if we could have 50v50 or 100v100 super scale battles we would. It certainly isn't impossible to find those number facing each other on OW it's only the mere limitation of the instance we don't. So what can be done? First you up the group limit from 25 which is the hardware limit to 50, above the hardware limit. You want to wash out the perception that there even is a limit, you do that by transcending it. Next, (and this is the meat and potatoes) when 2 groups collide and attack, and the number of players in this group exceeds the 25v25 hardware limit, instead of leaving players out of the battle, you automatically create a new battle which evenly spread out the forces into multiple instances. Ok so for example a group of 30 attacks another group of 30. Instead of opening a 25v25 and leaving 10 people out, you open a TWO (count em) TWO 15v15 instances. Or instead of that you can do one 20v20 instance and another 5v5. It doesn't have to be 50/50, whatever works the best. From there you may have multiple fights under one crosswords, multiple instances but one solidifying battle. You can open as many battles are are needed to fit the amount of players tagging into each other, there does not have to be a group limit. 100v100 face offs on OW can seamlessly translate into battles without the awkward dance of instance hopping and tags going wrong, not everyone getting pulled in and leaving people trapped out on the OW. A battle won, measured in BR sank can mean a victory reward for the winning sides in ALL instances within the same battle. Exploits are a concern but there will be none because the multiple instance will not initiate until a threshold of 20v20 is reached within the initial tag, meaning this only will happen when large groups face off with each other, and when the instances are split they are split in a way that always makes for the most sense which can either be a 50v50 going to a 20v20 I 20v20 I 10v10 or other combinations, all leaving room for late joiners or flexible reinforcements UNLIKE the hard locked 25v25 which locks the battle. Those combinations I leave to the developers to play with and tune to their liking. Conclusion I really like this idea for the simple reason that it's a workaround to the hardware limitation of our game. If technology allowed it 50v50, or 100v100 battles would be great in NA. It would actually be pretty spectacular as much as this game is to have seamless transition between OW and Instance allowing as many players as possible. The reality is that we can only fit 50 players in one instance. It's not a terribly small number, but it's not exactly Massively Multiplayer numbers of players. Though we can't fit everyone in one Instance, we can fit everyone into one battle consisting of more than one instance, in sort of the same way Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold beach were all a different "instance" of the same battle in the invasion of Normandy. Scaling up is better regardless of how it's achieved, and I think for Port Battles especially this sort of system could really shine and expand NA to allow massive operations not limited to hardware or server limitations. Thanks for reading ö7

I'm more worried about the MOBA style PB setup. 25v25 with purple/gold ships and top spec'd PB bonuses leaves little room for variety. Looking at the battles these ships product is very much champion-style where it's not so much gunnery, good angling/sail management and crew allocation, but raw DPS tank battles with 50% heals every 10 minutes. I would be okay with this if I knew in a few months it wasn't going to turn out that the clans that get to that point first will dominate not only PB's, but wreck havoc on the general OW population with ships that greatly outclass anything mid-range by huge margins. This is not like other MMO's like E.V.E or Albion, those have places where you are safe from being farmed. NA has no such safety and fleets of organized super fleets tracking their way through straight to the heart of any enemies capitals. Emphasizing the battle limits, 25v25, so if 25 of these ships roam OW then it's not like mid range ships can tag them 50v25 and use their numbers advantage. The side with the best ships can and will 25v25, then 25v15, then go on to stop a whole nation's players from doing anything for however long their around. There should be found a way to circumvent the limit by adding instances which spread forces within a battle into a series of consecutive battles. Once a battle hits say 20v20 a new battle is opened where a 5v5 is opened, from there one can choose either the 5v5 or 20v20 but both battles should go towards the same result whether on OW or PB.

Give me about 6 more months and maybe I'll be able to get through a Norfolk nChance OriginalPost in one go. Your posts hurt my head man, they hurt my pride as well. No substitute for time! Great ideas as always.

No data just that when the game is released, it's put on the "new releases" page which a lot of people will see. Many will set aside their past experience and check out the game once more, if the hype is big enough youtubers get in on the action like they've done before, this time updated their opinions for release Whether the hype increases or decreases from that point relies on what's lined up for the future. Look at dayZ's chart, a game with similar problems gaining an absolutely massive boost from it's release although the general opinion is that it was rushed, it was necessary to revive the dying hype and get it back on good track.

I seriously doubt they do, but you have to make do with the time windows you have. EA no longer benefits NA we need the release population more than anything. It's never too late for a game like NA there will always be people interested. It's not the best release but it's far from the worst.

This is what we like to hear!

Sign me up. Just kidding. LOL. I value my sanity.

Imo there should be a limit of 3 1st rates per battle, and 10 SOL's in total. That would make for more mixed rate battles instead of homogeneous 25 1st rate fleets. Ultimately everyone is going to sail the most powerful and if you let the happen then well....it will happen. You aren't going to ever balance it eco wise without making it near impossible to obtain a 1st rate, but you can improve battles directly through ROE.

Knowledge that has thus far been largely ignored despite making massive waves of positive constructive thinking aimed towards making the game better. The ideas that are meant to be added, that are missing will get suggested again and again, gaining the same support every time until the end of time. I'm indifferent. It really wouldn't make that much of a difference in the long run. Everything beyond page 3 might as well not exist anymore.

You can only go so long until you drain EA support. What you don't want is to go so long to where the people who are playing now get so far invested into what is just an unfinished product and mistaking it as is. After a number of years veterans take up a majority of playerbase and things start to get toxic and salty fast. You gotta launch pretty soon not only because it's been over the 4 year mark for EA, but you need new players with new perspective and new drive to carry content, otherwise you get a bunch of stale vets with chapped lips yapping off about non-meta things like pb's and stuff constantly and they'll forget they're the only people left and the game is a month away from pulling the plug due to lack of cash flow. You'll find very often that the same big suggestions get repeated by different people in waves once or twice a year, if the devs don't listen to this then there will be no progress, and the track of progress and where we are on the roadmap will be gone. Common conscious expectations being met is what pleases people the most, it's where the magick is, not picking up on the magick will end a mans whole career. Stuff like Raids, Alliances, Pirate/outlaw mechanics come to mind. You just can't have age of sail without these things and the players will (and have) drove the devs (and themselves) nuts collecting massive support for things that the devs for whatever reason don't wish to endeavour. Some really high quality, well thought out ideas literally almost perfected just need the coding and you could have the age of sail dream of a game. Probably the most frustrating thing, having brilliant instructions for something but no one to put the thing together and make it real.

DayZ got better after release, maybe NA is one of those "fine wine" type of games. Aye?

You should of proposed something earlier, this is exactly why you need a full wipe, to test the grind that every single new player will have to go through. If it's too much for you it's not too late to make a suggestion to remove book grind. It's different when you're not sitting comfortably anymore, but a wipe is to be expected always for release, that's how it tends to go.

I feel like this is sort of missing from the gameplay loop. Right off the bat you're forced into service in whatever faction's Navy you chose. This skips a portion of age of sail that is the ordinary sailor, trader, or privateer. I would say starting out, everyone should start out in this faction, and from there they could sail almost anywhere unprovoked except by player/AI pirates. They would sail under neutral flags, they cannot join player battles without letters of marque which last 1 month of game time, from there would have to reach a certain rank to become Navy.

A more realistic scenario, you get a 1v1 or 3v3 or even 3v5, you win, hop out to 10 ships on top of you ready to wipe you out. Happens all the time. A victory should ensure some kind of safe passage to nearest port. Not fair that gankers get an hour to set up outside your battle and you only get like what, 30 seconds to escape. Not in the slightest.