Bach

True, but to get those PVE marks you still have to at least be on the ocean somewhere providing a potential pvp target. If PVE marks can be created without pvp potential (target) it still opens up to players determined to "play it safe" making PVE marks from pure port based methods. This will bring crafted goods to market cheaper but at the cost of potential pvp. Plus it makes it so the econ players don't need pvp or pve players for anything. That's not an interconnected relationship.

Any idea that allows crafters to not need the PVP/RvR players will ultimately unbalance the sand box. The Marks system is meant to tie econ players products directly to pvp/rvr activities. Mostly RvR. Further, the value of player harvested marks will decrease as any player with a lot of gold can increase the mark pool without pvp/rvr activities ever occurring. The end result is that pvp/rvr becomes irrelevant to econ as econ can thrive without it. Players wont need to pvp/rvr if they can just get their marks sitting in a port producing raw mats to make into components and selling them to an NPC port that consumes them for gold to buy marks. There are multiple towns on the testbed you can already make money without ever leaving port. If they can buy the marks and no one has to ever risk pvp for them then there will be less pvp/rvr. The only ships that require marks are elite heavy frigates and other ships above the Tricomelee. Tricom and below require no marks. In the last gaming year the OW PVP hunting on NA was mostly frigates (Surprise/Reno etc..) as was the trader harvesting. SOL's dominated RvR situations and fleet grinding. Under the testbed rules only the heavy RvR and fleeting ships will be affected by marks. So the econ merchant that is trading in marks is essentially an SOL builder. Armies of alts cranking out gold could easily become the new way to build SOL fleets. Rather than months of pvp/rvr. You could build an entire 25 ship fleet of 1st rates without ever having any pvp/rvr activities in game. A valiant thought but think it will work backwards. Pleasing the econ players for a time at first as it puts a small turbo booster on SOL production. But in the end it is reducing pvp/rvr.

On testbed I was watching what seemed like the 100th NPC sail straight through an island to dock at the port on the other side. I occurred to me that that space in the ships path over land actually exists in the game world. There is just a check somewhere that tells the ship it is not supposed to travel there. So if there was a unit that acted the opposite in movement. If the land check is satisfied it can move. But if it is not it cant. Then we have a unit that only moves on the island and land masses but stops at the ocean. My NPC units can be told to attack a target and if that target is stationary they often board it and prosecute a land battle aboard ships. If I could buy or build an invasion force of soldiers with shallow water skiffs that would fit in my cargo ship I could sail to a beach of a land mass. Once there disembark that force to travel across the land mass to engage an enemy town in a land battle using a system almost identical to our boarding battles. The land battle could then generate rewards or RvR gains of some sort. Its radical and certainly un-necessary but an interesting what if...

I'm not opposed to tweaking or such but we have to be careful with this issue. In some ways it can be a backdoor into putting safe solo hunting of an enemy capital back into the game again. A few things need to be maintained A nations home waters are meant to be dangerous. If 20 players drop everything to teleport to one spot and become a "revenge fleet" in response to enemy players, that have already had fun sinking their team mates, there should be some reward to that effort. They are doing the RvR we want them too. To have a get out of jail free card to the small attacking group promotes futility in team play. So all you good intentions can become the opposite of what we want as a small group has some fun and a larger group feels the game is pointless. The small group has to get caught sometimes and punished for their crimes. The closer they are to a capital the more the situational odds should shift to favor the defenders. A 20 ship fleet sitting somewhere on the ocean anywhere in the game is supposed to control that sea area against small squadrons or solo ships. 20 players know this in their minds. If its too easy for the solo player to escape or if those twenty feel they are fighting the computer more than the other player they wont play that game. Again this is a game for the twenty players more than the one. Cruel as that sounds we saw this last year. To much protection just ends up with a small population game of soloists. Teamwork is supposed to pay off. Now that said Nobody likes to get zerged. In the event a nation grows dominant on shear population it is reasonable to put in some balancing mechanics to give the smaller groups a chance. But never should it be a guarantee. If there is a port battle to be had by 25 players and a nation fields it 25 and 40+ screeners in the ocean in front of the PB then there isn't going to be any fun PBs. Just zerg dominance. If in this instance a smaller group going to the PB manages to escape the huge screen then it is reasonable that it escaped into the PB and some method that gets them into the PB would be more fun for more players. Players shouldn't have to be harassed with sequential battles non stop. Be it by a revenge fleet or just a time wasting repeat griefer. There is nothing wrong with have to fight two battles. It gives each side a second chance at times. But more than that could just be harassment. Players should be able to expect some relief from this. In NA a battle can last 1.5 hour real time. Two battles 3hours. Players can not be expected to be forced to play this long without break or automatic significant loss. The new system makes ships relatively cheap. Yes, I know the horror stories but I'm heavily on the testbed. Even at one dura only ships larger than a Tricomelee are actually expensive. Being a pirate this past year I can tell you the standard OW ships were the Reno and Surprise. In the new system these are not "permit ships" and wont actually constitute a significant loss. But its still a loss and players need to feel they lost it fairly.

Aside from the programming that would have to account for changing terrain, edges of map and water depth its still getting exploited. So me and my Pirate buddies decide to spread some love in Swedish home waters. We would normally have to set up in the travel route between hat island and Gustavia to avoid Swedish revenge fleets. But we got this nifty new teleport to safety mechanic. So we just sail a speed rigged gank fleet straight into Swedish waters just outside the green ring. We take prizes all we want till the Swedes finally get organized with a <gulp> dreaded revenge fleet. Normally this would restrict our operation location and save some merchants that get to close to home. But not today. We just go about our ganking willy nilly without such cares. When we see the revenge fleet coming we just grab any bountiful home water NPC. End that battle and we're all spirited away by the wings of angels. We regroup at the predermine X,Y coordinates and rinse and repeat all we want. The Swedes will put up with this a few days or so and then decide any attempt to chase us is pointless and just let us have our way ganking in their waters. Because 9 out of 10 times any response force we attaking hunters don't want to fight we will never have to fight. In fact we could just make it standard procedure to teleport random after every fight and not even bother looking for revenge fleets. Completely one sided mechanic favoring the prepared hunters.

I like this one. Its somewhat simple. Its still going to get exploited but its better than the teleports. Example: Me and my Pirate buddies get outside of KPR just beyond view. We tag and NPC and demast it. Now we have a 1.5 hour ambush instance with 120sec invis when we spring the inviso trap on the Brits. After taking a few rich prizes the Brits come out with a revenge fleet that we fully deserve. Seeing the revenge fleet we used the 120sec invisibility that was actually meant to protect lil ol helpless us from just such revenge fleets camping us and we escape. AND we just turned your well meaning defensive magic mechanic into an offensive gank tool. I'm sorry guys but this is going to happen with every single magic method you keep coming up with. AND its always going to favor the ambush hunters because in the game they always choose the time and the place. So they get to be the ones to abuse the mechanics. The reacting defenders are at the mercy of how the mechanic happens to be used. Just let people log off in the instance so they can quit playing for real life concerns. If players choose to camp a battle spot for a half hour or more because the only defensive tactic they can think of is a full frontal mass of ships then more power to them. If hunters get themselves close enough to a capital port and repeatedly attack in the same spot till the defenders get enough time to teleport to capital, grab a ship and swarm that spot those hunters deserve the camping. Either come out of the battle guns blazing and take your punishment for getting caught like that or log off and take the penalty of not playing for awhile. There is no need to make the game easier on solo hunters. All that is needed is a log off to cover real life issues.

I don't really agree. Just because you escaped the first battle in a defensive tag or a purposely bad NPC tag doesn't mean you escaped. It didn't in real life either. USS President (Connie) ran from a British squadron. It out ran all ships but HMS Endyiomen. In the ensuing running fight President surrendered but Endyiomen lost rigging. In the night USSPresident escaped Endyiomen. But it ran into the rest of the squadron in the morning as it was still being hunted in that area. It was captured by the British. Had that first escape when Captain Decateur tricked HMS Endyiomen's captain been rewarded by a teleport to Boston Harbour history would be very different. Anyway, the point of this isn't a history review. It's that players can attain a technical "escape" by a variety of means that aren't very fair to the hunters. Rewarding such gameyness with a free teleport isn't a great thing.

No matter what you do to fix this it's going to get gamed to some advantage. The more complex you make your solution the more it gets gamey. It needs to be simple and basic to avoid most exploitation. I like Maturin's solution above. Just let us log out in the battle. At the 15 min kick out mark, seeing that no one leaves the battle, the camping players will know not to waste more time. Later the player that logged out has to return at the same spot. No free teleports or safe passages. Just a way to quit for the night, go to dinner table because your mom is pissed off or otherwise. No one is forced to play or to wait more than 15min from the end.

If you were in battle Sputh of KPR and decided to call it a night or hit tow due to consecutive battles the system would put you right outside KPR. Not much of an escape. LOL

I've been testing this stuff for over a week now. Alts are largely irrelevant. What matters is that individual players of a nation create a market hub to sell raw materials and sub components. Once that is done no one needs any Alts. You just help supply the hub and buy what you need from it. What it sounds like you are describing is a "one man show" supply chain. Yes, guys with the money for x3-4 accounts can certainly do that. But it's kind of pointless and a lot of micro-managing to get it too work. The "Lone-non clan player" is not lost and I can think of several ways to pull it off. The easiest is to make sure you don't choose to play in a tiny population nation that needs everyone to help the team. You won't be doing them any more favor than they are doing you. Instead join the biggest team you can and just play lone guy solo lost in the mix. You'll get to use their Econ hubs when you want to and it will be over stocked so the won't even notice you only take away stuff and not give any. Britain, Pirates and probably USA you can get lost inside the populations and play solo all you like. I would ask you this one thing though. What do you think is the roll or purpose of a lone non-clan player in an RvR sand box?

Some players play 6-12 hours a day. Some don't. Some use one or more Alts. Some don't. We should all stop looking at time in game and number of Alts as a competition of some type. I'm not even sure where that line of thinking is coming from. If a guy plays 12 hours a day that his his choice. It's probably one that could destroy his real life. If a guy pays the money for x3 accounts that is his choice. As long as we all can get a PvP ship when we want or play the number of hours we want that is that matters. It's not much of a competition. But if you really want to compete in that way then the race is measured in hours of your time and money for new accounts. Once you realize that stuff makes no real differences then you just look at those guys and smile. The only time that matters is the time you can't play the game when you want to with the one character you want to do it with. Do hopefully we get past this testing to wipe phase very soon.

Even EVE as a version of national teleport. "Clone jumping". This isn't just about allowing pirates to hop around the game to hunt players solo. It's about RvR with x8 teams. The team on the offense chooses the time and place. The team on defense reacts. Without national teleports there won't likely be very many OW defenses of ports. Just port battles. Teams will either have to confine themselves to coastal defense or go all in on an offensive war front. Either way the amount of open world RvR gets cut in half. Large population teams will become the only ones that can attack and defend home waters at the same time. Now IF the game population grows on the release to support dedicated war front the removing the national teleport would be ok. But until you know the population of a nation is going to be 200 players or more we simply have to allow a way allow a smaller number of players to fight multiple battle fronts. Otherwise the game will mostly just be players fighting NPCs on the OW and 46hrs later PvP in port battles with very little else in the way of RvR.

Doesn't this situation solve the one you were worried about on the previous page? Pirates and Privateers camping KPR from LaNavasse. If British players blockade La Navasse, and your in the best position to do it, then the pirates are the ones screwed/stuck if they can't out fight you. If you do this occasionally you will either get some great Pvp fights at the LaNavasse blockade or you'll see a squadron of pirates in lynx's sailing over the horizon going to bother someone else.

Having been one of those pirates hunting KPR from La Navasse last year I could give you several ways to thwart or hamper such pirate activities. But part of the game is your team figuring it out or even devising something I haven't. Besides, no one actually goes there specifically to target new players. We're mostly looking for you. The simplest solution to true new players is to tell them to move somewhere else. But if you want PvP then setting up methods to defend that coast or harass La Nabasse is a way to get it.

If you know pirates and privateers are raiding your home waters of KPR from La Navasse then what any good British naval officer would do and figure out a way to protect your coast. If you just leave you new players to the wolves that's your choice in a sand box. But the player made content generatation is in you playing the game to stop them. Not the computer generating "safe spaces." that offer no content without PVE mission development.

The Brits start in the center of the map surrounded by Spanish econ port most likely free for the taking. There is nothing an organized population can not accomplish there. The Swedes and Danes don't even start with the resources for sustained ship building and even if they did the long term action is in the center of the map so they will just be forced to move. Swede and Dane will be good for trading and odd stuff. But its a HUGE risk to put all your XP and craft XP on the line to permanently play them. GB is the best start IMO and most of all because they cannot be removed from the center of the map. They will always have access to the central action and wont have to sail to far to get it as compared to the rest. Except Pirates. Pirates have a similar start and are the perfect natural enemy to GB. The USA starts resource rich and self sufficient, including LO, but its got to move south to get into the action. Still not a bad start up. The rest of the nations face low resources at start, slower build up times and longer sails to get into pvp action.

This will sound strange but as good as balancing nations sounds it's a bad idea to do until the server pop gets really high. why? By not balancing nations the sand box should naturally create a couple mega teams a few light weight teams and a couple tag along tiny teams. What the means for RvR is the mega-teams will be running around doing 25v25 PBs and can generate Trafalgar like sea battles. As long as the nega-teams can't or don't ally. The light weight teams will be playing smaller contests on the fringes of the big boys battles and by ally to one of the super powers sway the map on occasion. The tiny nations will be doing unique mostly solo play like stuff. In short, there will be something in theory for everyone. So its actually a good thing Britain, USA and Pirates will be BIG teams. Players that want fleet BIG battles should join these teams. Players in the middle size nations like Dutch, France should expect to be more satellite like nations that may go off by themselves or ally to one of the bigger ones and/or smaller ones. So if you like alliance type play and cross nation coordination the middle size teams might be for you. If you like to be off by yourself, maybe playing as a neutral merchant selling arms to both side or just exploring then maybe Denmark/Sweden are for you. You cant very well be British and be a neutral trader with half the Caribbean looking to shoot you on sight. If we balanced the nations right away the whole population gets divided by 8. Trafalgar like battles would be rare and there wouldn't be any opposing super powers the others rally behind or against. It would also have more stifled play styles. The Dev's are going to find that as the sand box develops they will need to put in a difficult but possible way for players to switch nations.

Its been adjusted. The knowledge tree isn't going to extend below frigates. But we will still need to excel in the Endy/Tricom path if you want an elite Connie.

I also think all that EZ mode stuff backfired. As good as it may have sounded, in the end it just didn't work. But the good thing is the Devs seem to have figured that out. We're going back to more hard core challenges and from what I have seen on the test bed I'm liking it. I think THE most important thing to a sand box is challenges that players cannot overcome playing solo. The sandbox relies on player created content. Player created content generally relies on challenges players need to band together to overcome. Teams, rivalries, trade markets and such all develope naturally when players have to do the problem solving themselves. When players don't need to band together to solve problems they don't end up creating any content for each other. Smuggler flags put every resource in every solo players hands, OW ROE made it safe to wander around solo in enemy waters. Making player coastal patrols useless and hunting party team mates unnecessary. So no player to player content is created to over come challenges. It becomes an narrow content Arena game but with a lot of sailing in between matches. ?

As Hodo mentioned above. Let's keep it clean. It takes two to fight and your posts were coming on strong first. I happen to agree with a lot of what your saying but a locked thread is useless. ~quoted content removed ~ moderation team

The Devs have stated they are intending to make an arena game for those that like instant action. As far as Trafalgar in the OW, it is achievable and I have taken part in a few. But in a sand box that stuff is largely left up to the player to have to create. Most fail by choosing peace and safety over war in a war game. My opinion is that certain rule sets implemented over the past year deterred players from generating their own Trafalgars. Early on when populations were high 25v25 port battles were had. Later as the population thinned and the alliance system combined with the teleport systems created super powers in PBs there were less Trafalgars. I know it sounds strange. You would think teleports combined with alliances would result in frequent 25v25 PBs. But it didn't. Human nature, I'm guessing, turned the tables. For players to aggressively RvR they have to think they can win. They have to see light at the end of tunnel. When the three largest RvR nations ally with each other the really big RvR just dies off. For some reason they choose not to fight the opponents that are actually in their own weight class. Anyway, the devs are making a game for you that you can push a button and join a battle in 1st rate without all the logistics, planning and sailing. No strategy needed. No chess match of wits between nations of admirals. Just unit tactics and button mashing as fast as you can.

I like this concept. It puts the control and the decision into a semi-informed players hands to shape the game. It also reflects the genre as word of mouth notoriety of particular ship or captain would have been passed from port authority and taverns across the Caribbean. I like it. You should put it into the suggestions.

Quite true. However it didn't peak because it had the perfect rules set. It peaked because it was new, fresh and popular. When we had so many people last year we had to open additional servers most of those players were playing under rules the players today think were barbaric. Everyone could get attacked anywhere by anyone, port battles could happen at any time of the day, there was battle screen ambushes, huge reinforcement timers, plenty of ganking and all kinds of stuff that if you mentioned doing today people would scream about. Yet we had so many we had to open another server. So in truth, the rule set probably doesn't really matter so much as being or appearing fresh and new. If we want more population I think this new release really just needs a good PR agent to sell it and probably not much else. Pirates of the Caribbean 5 comes out in a month. If the timing is there and the word of this new Caribbean sailing game with an awesome combat system gets around the potential for many new players is definitely there.

This is going to sound cruel but the best solution to solving a small nations problem is not to help them through an in game computer moderated alliance system. As good as it sounds it just ends up being a content killing change. It would take us back to players being able to do everything solo. Which in turn reducing player interactions and eventuall leads to everything becoming uniform and less dynamic. The challenges to a small nation are resources, port battle participation and to some degree coastal security. Everyone of these can be over come without changing any rules. For resources the small nation can simply over come this with player to player trade agreements. Player will have to get out and meet other players, use the trade channel, make friends or otherwise create content for each other. If player meet and make trade friends and relationships with other nations players they end up generating their own alliances. This will lead to screening friends for port battles. Possibly to benevolent foreign clans that might take ports and then give then to the small nation to help build up or secure trade deals. This is much much more involved player interaction than the computer simply letting others that may never talk to you enter your port battles for their own enjoyment. As above, once you get trade deals set up and real in game friends made the coastal security option also can be solved. Perhaps a benevolent foreign clan agrees to let your new players level in a region they own and provide protection. All things in a sand box can be solved through player interactions. These interactions create teams, rivalries and most of all player made content. Computer enforced alliances and boundaries remove the necessity for player interactions and thereby stifle or stale the content if not constantly infused by the developers to make up for semi-isolated players not doing so.

The true irony is that most of them are actually complaining not because of the game itself but because they got banned in the forums or the game chats or the game itself for bad behavior they knew was bad while they were doing it. Most just feel there is some rule set or court of law concept protecting their God given right to be an asshat to everyone else if they are upset about something. Some found a loophole in the game mechanics they could "innocently" exploit before getting caught. I review as much of this stuff as possible to try to understand it. It is becoming a gaming community sociological pattern. An unbounded environment with low responsibility to consequences of actions sort of concept. Is it really possible the Devs are trying to destroy their own Game? Turns out not to be the case. The general case starts out as a complaint and then escalates usually with the player pushing the escalation. Eventually they post dead animals or do other obvious violations of reasonable public conduct either in anger or purposely to provoke the devs into action. Then they complain about that action as the cycle continues. They hop onto our TS and other comms to plead their cases against the devs and inevitably to get everyone and their Alts to sign onto their negative forum post and reviews. In the past I typically just ignore this dance of self inflicted victimization and psycological warfare against what is really just a game. Starting this year I'm not. I'll post against this childish crap. I'll answer attack reviews with the flat truth. Call them as I see them. If the devs truly piss you off the real answer is simple. Just quit playing their game. Otherwise, suck it up buttercup and play on. But please just stop all that whiny forum tantrum crap. For the good natured gamers reading this, it's become obvious any games moderators can't effectively curb bad behavior. It equalizes at whatever level the participating gaming community demonstrates it is willing to accept. If you want it changed only you can effect that change by letting others know where the limits of what you will accept are set at. For me, you can complain about the devs or criticize the game in the forums all you want and I will support you. But as soon as you start using inflammatory posts designed to publicly provoke, offend or harass others then that support is gone. If you post false negative reviews against the game, that we're all still trying to play, in an attempt to damage it out of spite then that support is gone.