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Vinnie

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Everything posted by Vinnie

  1. ^^^ What he said... Has to be the update.
  2. One disappointment in Loki is the inability to battle chat with the new Loki-ed no-longer-AI opponent. It would be great to know who you are dealing with and chat like in a normal battle. I think allowing the Loki-er to say "Ha Ha, take this you big bully" or the Loki-ed to say "If I'd known Koltes was going to take command I might have reconsidered attacking an Indefatigable with a Mercury"... I'm a little disappointed in the game's shrinking social aspects. We lost open-world communications with opponents, which I found usually fun. One reason people play MMOGs is because there are other people involved. Without communications, not much difference. Regarding the whole Loki concept, its genius. One of my favorite parts of the old "Napoleon Total War" was the ability to open up your battles to random opposing players. This should be similar fun.
  3. If the user of the Loki rune wins the battle does he get combat medals? Should get them x3...
  4. I strongly approve of the limit on # of high rate ships in a PB, but oh, the whining.... Say, in clan X's PB they assign roles and friendly clans show up with higher-than-expected rates. Not let them in? Will take a boatload of coordination, not usually seen. Hard to find a way to assign captains to ship-types. Can't limit by rank since everyone is eventually an Admiral. Can't let clan-leaders assign ship-types, people will break off and form small or solo clans. I can't see how it would work, people being people. And the whining would be even louder over shiptypes limited by nationality. Everyone would claim that the other guy's specialty ship is OP and destroys the game. Nerf it! Buff mine!! Killing the game!!! I quit!!!!. DLC ship complaints x10.
  5. 100% agree, I've had lots of fun conversations with opposing players in the game. I miss open-world conversations, those have been fun too, very few abusive. For a MMOG the population is unusually civil overall. One day I was in a Requim (which I can't sail for shit) when engaged by an expert in the same (Latron I believe). He spent 15 minutes giving me lessons before sinking me. A gentleman and a sailor. Not often you hear someone say "now shoot at this part of my mast"...
  6. Did some thinking about possible reasons for the decline of the game. I think that the game fails in one key area; -- The game needs to be fun for people of all skill levels. -- That doesn't mean that skill level shouldn't determine who wins an engagement, of course it should. But all skill levels and ranks must have a role to play or things get boring and frustrating fast. Expecting many people to suffer through a hundred hours of getting sunk by better players in better ships within ten minutes of leaving the capital zone is just silly. Most people won't stick around long enough to "get gud". And even the people who don't "get gud" enough should be able to have fun. Think of the difference between these two scenarios; 1) Player sails out of Shroud Cay into the patrol zone. Enters a 3 v 3 battle, fires some guns, takes a few hits, expends some adrenaline, participates in some team conversations, gets sunk and winds up in Shroud with both experience points and experience. 2) Player sails out of Shroud Cay toward the patrol zone. Gets jumped behind the island by six players who taunt him while sinking him in five minutes. He winds up back in Shroud pissed off as hell, having gained nothing except a desire to leave a bad review and deinstall the game. The players in scenario 2 don't seem to realize that they are eating their seed corn. They will wail about a lack of content, watch the game decline and blame everything but their short-sighted egotism. It is the same as if WoW allowed level 20 characters to PvP in the lower level areas. Pretty soon there wouldn't be any new level 20 characters, everyone getting tired of getting their head pounded into the ground while being told to "get gud". Human nature being what it is you won't end scenario 2 without game mechanics. Some have been proposed; Ranked level zones, no exp for gank-level kills, etc... Till some way of allowing the average players to participate in the game, the game will decline. As anyone who has fought against me will testify, I'm an average player. My skills won't wow anyone. Until recently I still enjoyed the game but find myself logging in less and less. Opportunities for anything but getting ganked four-to-one are few. Its become frustrating and boring. Forum is still fun though. Hope it continues after the servers are shut down next year. Vinnie
  7. I wonder if instead of alliances (or until alliances) small countries should all jump to a single no-longer small nation. One which still has a decent ship-building capability. Then if the zergs roll over that you can stick a fork in the game, its done.
  8. The one-l lama, He's a priest. The two-l llama, He's a beast. And I will bet A silk pajama There isn't any Three-l lllama. -- Ogden Nash And of course, Nash was incorrect. A three-l lllama is a really big fire... (Pardon begged from non-Americans)
  9. Hard to justify watching the game get destroyed by crappy game mechanics when Borderlands 2 just dropped a new free DLC.
  10. This would go a ways towards reducing the main danger to the game - the fact that there is no negative feedback loop on clan size, which can only end up with one clan ruling all (because statistics). I doubt it is strong enough, AI being what it is. But it is the very first time I've heard the Devs even recognize that this is a threat to the game. I'm heartened.
  11. Well, they wouldn't operate as a clan. Don't even have to talk to each other, antisocial bastards that they are. Sail by, give each other the finger, just kick in $50,000 a week into the port-owners coffers to maintain access to ass-kicking ships.
  12. Wonder if dedicated solo players might form a clan which only acts as a friend to a port-owning clan? A traditional clan might open their shipyard to a group of lone wolves if they offered to screen for the occasional port battle. Call themselves SOLO or something ("Sons of Liberty Online"). Or charge a fee.
  13. This "Collapse of Nations" thread illustrates the need for regular map-resets and perhaps wipes. Hear me out before the expected "You can have my 1st rate when you take it out of my cold, dead hands". In WWII online there are set victory conditions which when met, one side is declared the winner and the map resets. We could do the same, with rewards for the winning side. The rewards could be additional ship bonuses to the winning clans or be as simple as getting a permanent national crown next to your name. It would be impressive to be "Insert-Cool-Name-Here" with a black crown (won with Pirates), grey crown (won with Russians) and blue crown (won with French). Map resets wouldn't be traumatic if they were an expected part of the game. In any system (genetics and AI) drift will form a majority and overcome, which is why there is a genetic Eve and a genetic Adam. Randomness ensures >someone< will win. Game has to take this into account.
  14. Would be a great training tool for helping new members of the clan get up to speed with pvp.
  15. Well, considering my won / loss ratio, I'd play "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid...
  16. Can one set up an outpost in a foreign open national port? I don't think so. If one could, I agree, my point wouldn't matter as much. There is a big different between being ganked in normal open world in and the PvP zone. In the zone I get marks based on the damage I do, even if I get sunk. Not so in the OW. I almost don't mind getting sunk in the zone, which is just as well if you have fought against me. :) Gank me outside the free port closest to the zone I'm trying to get into and I'm done for the night, to hell with it. Which is why it is counterproductive, decreasing the population in the actual zone.
  17. It has become difficult getting into the PvP Zones due to large groups of gankers who sit right off the nearest free port and intercept ships as they leave the port. This is worst around the free ports with narrow access points (Tumbado & La Tortue) but it happens off Aves and La Mona as well. This discourages single players and small groups of players from participating. It might not be unreasonable to make the waters around free ports a reinforcement zone, under the assumption that free ports would jealously guard the freedom of their waters. This would give people a chance to get out of the port safely and allow the PvP zones to serve their original function. For the life of me I can't figure out why some players would rather attack outside a nearby zone than in it. With more marks to be had in the zone it seems like "eating your seed corn" to attack players this way, even more so when it discourages players from participating in this very enjoyable part of the game.
  18. Bah - That was while he had both arms. Easy. Now, if it were after he had lost the one...
  19. Admin - your examples use 66 and 99 galleys against a handful of square-riggers in a boarding action to illustrate your point. That justifies this addition to the game as realism? I think there is some serious post-mistake rationalism going on here. Also, I note that these actions were in >very< confined waters. In fact, looks like an anchorage.
  20. Not that I expect it to matter much, but the only way I can impact this discussion is to vote with my feet and back away from the game till the Le Requin is balanced against the rest of the game. I've wasted too much time chasing these things around. A silly, gratuitous, a-historical "addition" to the game. There must have been better ways to raise funds than to add a functionally invulnerable ship to the game. To quote the game's own advertising description; "Large crew allows you board enemies with confidence, and lateen sails profiles will help you escape from the most heated situations."
  21. I'm not the best PvP player in the game,far more often gankee than ganker, but the game needs a mix of PvP & PvE. For those who say "You enjoy PvE? Go to the PvE server" I say "You want pure PvP? That's what Naval Action Legends was for, and it wasn't a rousing success, was it? Did you play it?" The chance of a trade run being rudely interrupted adds tension to the game even though I don't go off hunting traders myself. The game must cater to a variety of tastes to succeed, and those who wish that it catered only to their taste are inadvertently wishing for the game's failure.
  22. I'm trying not to be too peeved and failing dreadfully. I am sick and tired of trying to make my way around in open world with 10 feet of visibility around my ship. I'm 2 km from Williamsburg and still can't find the entrance, playing bump-and-grind with the shore. Do the developers think it is fun or smart to finally have players log off and play something else while the weather clears? We don't have grid references and in bad weather we don't have land references. I've sometimes had to log out and back in just to get that two seconds of clarity before the rain descends. Realistic to force ships to heave to and wait out a fog? Of course. Wise? Not on your life. Realism is one thing, enjoyability another and to have a successful game there needs to be a balance between the two. To make a game realistic but painful to play isn't a great design decision. It would be realistic to force players to take a hammer to their teeth to emulate scurvy but I doubt it would lead to great reviews. And yes, I know the RN had lemons by this era but they also had sextants and somehow the developers thought it would add to the game to remove anything more accurate than point-to-point navigation. Oh, the joy of trying to find a wreck in the rain. Not doing the usual "This sucks, I quit", but it does indeed suck. Design decisions like this make me fear for the viability of the game. Yes, I know, "It is only Alpha". That covers rubbish like this for only so long, specially with the game so close to release.
  23. Perfectly said. For all the talk of realism here the focus of this realism has been on fine-grain stuff ("how many inches of oak would a 12 pound ball penetrate at 200 yards"). There's more to realism than that. I've been amazed at the focus and concern of the Devs toward driving players toward meaningless PvP. Nations didn't fund navies to fight without goals. If a fight doesn't fit within a strategy even a victory is meaningless. One fights a war towards an end. The global strategy of the game should drive the events, not "let's sail around in circles and shoot at each other and prove who has the bigger dongle". Yours is the first voice I've heard saying this. (Man the rails, hand salute). "Strategy without tactics is the long road to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat". - Sun Tzu
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