Slim McSauce

Sounds like you're just nervous that if implemented, this would make the Peace server more popular then the War server because most people would prefer pvp by choice then always being at risk of being ganked and losing everything on the war server.

but wait, aren't there still cannons and large pitted battles still happen in peace server? What exactly would change for the PVE'rs tranquil experience if they had the option to opt in to consensual pvp, wouldn't that be a win-win?

you don't know that this game is the first of it's specific genre there's no basis to believe that the developers have a plan for what to do with it, this sort of change to Peace server could take months to complete, as much as PVE could use this the War server is in need of desperate repair and testing. Another re-write, another whole new set of problems. But hey who knows this could also be 100% what the game needs to reach 2k daily players again, if that's what will reach a larger demographic of people who may not of liked what the rules are on either the war or peace server.

This has potential, PVers want their play uninterrupted from hunters and gankers, with the choice of aggressive AI which is good PVE content and adds an element of danger you can opt in for, for possibly more rewards. PVPers get the same consentual duels they're use to having, and if you want the ganks there's always war server. It actually puts perspective into the world that not everyone is a combatant, some people are merchants, some are privateers, some just want to grind out ships slots for later, or have duels without the risk of finding yourself in a unwinnable battle where you lose everything. You can play exactly how you want to and no one's forcing you into something else. The best unintended consequence of this I think is that pirates could actually mean something in this sort of server environment. If pirates really have a bit of lee-way from these rules, it could actually make them the real pirates that we come to know and expect, lawless individuals. Given the right ruleset, ya know no RVR, certain ships only, no SOL's then this could make for an interesting dynamic between pirates vs everyone else, because let's face it everybody hates rats. No more hilariously tone deaf pirate nation, if you break the rules, you become a pirate and your forced to play as such, and that's to prevent you from breaking the laws of the sea, but of course you can choose this path and play in true hardcore fashion. Brilliant. I love this idea. I think this is very much in the spirit of the Peace server as a server will some rules and regulations, and if you break those you become the outlaw, depraved and universally hunted by the law abiding citizen privateers and National members of the Navies, as appose to the War server which is a bloodbath and all out chaos. I would make the switch for this, not because it's safer but because by adding a bit of order to the ROE, you create the ability to break that order which you can compartmentalize into a section of gameplay, while the PVP War server remains to be wildly lawless and out of control with little remorse.

that's hardly qualifies as pvp, it's just a quick and easy kill, not an actual fight which takes skill and effort to do.

do it again but record it next time.

hey, so was she, but I can't keep her. I've got my own principles to uphold.

plz no, i have too much time on my hands as it is. No but really, devils advocate going hard, I love the OW, it's a very ambitious task to take on a genre that does not yet exist. It would just be nice if we had a clear vision, and knew your intentions behind some changes like eco and crafting, and would address the dissenters because some of us have valid arguments and bring up good questions that even if are not quite based on the mark are questions that will likely be asked until they're answered, otherwise we have no idea what you're trying to do with some parts of the game being the way they are. For a bit of an example, what are you trying to achieve with patrol zones? They're currently being placed near freeports in areas that were previously already quite populated for PVP. I don't mind them being in these spots but I don't feel as if you're using the PZ to it's full potential. There's a lot not going on in a large area of the map and if you empoyed PZ more as a tool to facilitate pvp in more variety of areas (my idea, you probably saw was to put one zone at every 100% hostility port, that way people in each nations see it and flock over to the port for general carnage.

That was not a good promise to make in the first place. Games get wiped on release coming out of alpha/beta whatever. That's just what happens when games come out of testing stage. The wipe is a promise saying "hey, our game is in a finished state, from here on you're playing what is essentially our final product), of course patches go on for as long as they can but the wipe is the sacrifice that every game makes to usher in the release. If you're game doesn't require a wipe prior to release can you really say that it's final if the progress made in testing is still valid?

because like I said all those videos I watched 4 years back of sidestrafe that got me into the game were sea trials and those videos are still the some of top page with half a million views when you search NA.

The developement is literal hell and it's comparable to dayz, Years of circle back developement to be released in a non-finished state, unless by some miracle we get raids, musketry, pirate mechanics and clan warfare before release, the OW is just as empty as it's always been and has never been a game but a buffer to the game.

All the people who bought the game in early 2016 bought it with the expection that it was going to be an arena based naval combat sim (as close to a naval combat sim there is) I'd bet money none of them at the time expected the game to drop the arena and go MMO. Hell the first gameplay I saw of NA was the seatrials by sidestrafe I think, that was well after the game had went MMO. I would not blame anyone for wanting the arena over the MMO, the ambition and understanding of player psychology to create the necessary short/long/medium goals, interwoven content and fleshed out game world required to make an MMO is a lot to chew. I mean you can just look at how vicious the developement cycle is going round and round trying to find some place to settle can take a toll on people.

yeah, good games tend to grow. Warframe for example.

That's not a gank because the BR is pretty much equal in that fight. Even so a teak/wo indef is cremated by a victory in about 2 minutes.

maybe, just maybe it's because legends never launched out of closed alpha. Actually the game was it's biggest during sea trials right? so yeah, point proven.

The limiting of chain came with an expectation that repairs would be limited with it, that way a skillfull captain could waste the chain/reapirs of his opponents and have enough of his own to get away. NA could live off 100% even battles, even 1.5x br battles, but it would not last long if every battle was a gank. Ganks, or any scenario where the battle is mostly decided before it is even played, is not good gameplay and is not attractive to gamers looking for a good time.

The premise is that the port battle will attract people from both nations for the promise of medals and pvp. Maybe in the gulf this wouldn't be big, but places like the FL coast, bahamas, central and S Americas, and Antilles this would incite much violence between the nations who are pitted against each other. For me at least I would rather sail the front lines of my territory for a patrol that shadows a PB with my nation than sail from the same free ports to a patrol with and against a bunch of randoms

Sure, the difference is that those ships don't have gyro stability and near perfect accuracy at 100m. The demasting we have now would work, if it's gunnery counterpart was authentic, since it's not we pay with unauthentic demasting. You can buff/nerf masts more, but it will never feel right, you won't be able to convince your senses that demasting actually works like that, because it just doesn't IRL.

Here's an idea, once hostilities are laid, members of the offending and defending nation should receive a patrol zone outside of the port. This makes sense because naturally people would be patrolling around the port since the hostilities are 100%. This would serve to further facilitate that notion, and best of all it would reward people for participating in wide scale RVR actions in a goal-oriented way.

I wonder how this will compare to new hostility mechanics. Still great ideas I fully support.

Gunnery suffers from massive aim assist, there's more skill in the common FPS than there is in NA gunnery, the rest is mods and superships. NA is an action MMO that likes to pretend it's a tab-target game, you don't tune your ship, you make it a large % better using the mods, negating even more skill. No, building a 5/5 monster with cart, copper, invinsible masts and 25% turn buff is not a skill, skill what you do with your ship, not what you did to it.

Unrefutable logic, how could we forget the boats? Back to the books!

It's not clan based though, clans already get a full warehouse and they (should) get dockspaces of their own. This is for the nation, why is it that you or I of the same nation cannot access a port that we ourselves captured. Maybe in the future when clan wars are added they can bar others from the port, and fight to open access but first we need to fix the limit on ports that makes them go unused. It makes no sense that outpost are required to use a port that your clan/nation owns. What exactly is the point of that? Someone, anyone show me the benefit. I've already laid out my case, in theory it works, in practice it will too if you give it a chance.

Starting off, lets address the not so clear problem that keeps the game focused around free-ports and nation capitals, and not being a goal of expanding territories and fighting to reach new areas of the map. There's been a common assumption if you wanted to find PVP, you either had to sail out from a free-port, or you had to travel all the ways to an enemies capital port.This has been known to be the case for as long as I've been playing coming on 3/12, maybe 4 years now. It's not new that we've been discussing how to facilitate pvp on and around the map, and why it is that the game is so focused down onto these two very specifics points that the rest of the map goes unnoticed and largely uncontested, many without even an economy despite being owned by a clan. So what's the cause of this island-stagnation of player traffic and combat? I believe it's an inherit limitation placed on the game by locking the player's use of ports to 8. Meaning no matter what your nation/clan does RVR wise, you will only ever be able to use 8 ports on the map either to store goods, store ships, create and craft and stage pvp from. You need an outpost to store ships and items, you also need an outpost to build a building. Once you run out of outposts, you're stuck. You cannot advance further into or around the map, you've lost the fuction of using ports, even if they're owned by your very own nation which you are likely a high ranking member in, heck not even clans get access to their own ports unless they build outposts there. This I think is where the limitation is started, and it permeates to all of the map. Heavily limited outpost, heavily limited traffic. A port that can not be used, goes unused. It's not by mere choice someone doesn't start enterprise somewhere in the gulf, or lower south/middle central america. It's that from a gameplay perspective. Say you, your clan and your nation owned the upper end of the Gulf and wanted to push down S either down Florida or Mexico. Assuming you already had a few outpost slots taken from capitals, freeports and resource areas, after taking just a few ports on your campaign, you would already be at the limit of expansion. The game ends for you there, there is no advancing. You've reached the artificial limit of port ownership. The solution? Make every port owned by your nation, and by your clan usable to store items and ships, leaving outpost for production buildings, freeports, and insurance from port capture. How will it work? Each port captured by your nations grants you 3 dock slots, and 10-20 warehouse slots. These can be expanded regularly, a enemy capture would negate this effect and remove your items from the port, an outpost being in limited supply would counter that which would make it useful for dangerous, high risk areas. Otherwise all ports can be used and made valuable. More traffic would bring more tax to the clans who own these ports bringing more business and pvp opporunities to the more remote or out of the way areas of the map. No longer will only a handful of the 300 something ports on the map be used and fought for, this would make every port valuable, as each port captured is tangible reward in itself granted in more dock space, more warehouse space, and more staging for eco and combat for not just you, but your nation and clan as well. Thanks for reading.

That's a nice turn on it's head. You can't skip rank using the tutorial, but you can't advance past captain without it. I agree skipping ranks using a tutorial is counter to the idea, but using the final exam as the bar to advance beyond the rank of captain is fair and consistent. Skips should not be a thing, and should not be a tool of expert players to speedrun the game, because that's ignoring that the intention of a tutorial is to help new players learn, not the other way around. You'll get very poor results trying to subvert tutorials to cater to veteran players, even if unintentional!.