Bach

Not a pressing issue. But before release, the game needs a way to transfer clan leadership so successful established clans can have continuity should the leader go on military deployment, otherwise be offline for extended time or be leaving the game.

I find it unlikely that players gank for gold rewards. Remove all the gold and you will still have miss matched contests. The better question is why are there mismatched contests? My group usually get together in numbers of 2-6 depending solely on who is online at the time. We try to include everyone. It's not like players build groups specifically to create off match contests. Then we sail to enemy waters. This typically takes 30 minutes or more. Once there we look for targets or defenders. If the first target that comes along after 45min of game play happens to be a lone Constitution what would you have us do? It sounds like some you expect us to hold a mini lottery and the one guy that wins gets to play the game while the other 5 sit there and wait for an hour. Because matched battles in this game take around an hour. Now that's 1hour and 45 min time input into game with zero action for 5 guys and game play for just 2 guys. So let's say the remaining 5 either split their group and leave there other behind and move one. Next target they stumble across is lone Indiamen. Again they draw lots to see who fights it. 1 Fights the Indy and the other 4 either wait or move on. The one guy caps the Indy with 6000 Tobacco on board. Now what? How do you split it? Whom escorts it back to port if the others move on? How is this possibly fair to the other 4 who now have invested 2 hours 45 min into game with again ZERO action to show for it? So once again let's say those remaining 4 just moved on and let the other guy have the Indy and the spoils. Now they reach the enemy capital. Outside are 20 various ships all ready to defend for King and country. So our x4 are laughing. They sail into the 20 ships and grab a weakfish ship compared to theirs. Meanwhile the other 19 trying to guard the coast rush to the rescue! But only three of them are getting in and since the first was weak they are handicapped. The 4 handily win that one hour battle. They now finally got x1 fight and they have put in 30min to station + 15min to first potential fight + 15min to second potential fight + 15 min to 3rd actual fight + 1 for that one fight = 2hours 15minutes into game with one fight to show for it. Meanwhile 16 players just wasted an hour watching that battle. It's not hard to go on and on with this. We are playing an incredibly SLOW game already. It is rediculous to put in restrictions to whatever PvP we might happen to come across for the sake of "balanced ideal battles" unless you can speed up the rest of the game. Otherwise we're better off just to let the chips fall where they may and fight each battle however it occurs.

Sounds good but what if the guy playing the NPC just runs away? Every NPC fight is about to be all about gaining hostility. What if a nation, instead of risking their own ships, just jumps into all the NPCs and sails away to exit denying you the hostility gains?

NA is a PvP game. It's has been advertised, sold and planned as a PvP game. It has PVE options of play but the game world is not designed around it. It is designed around PvP. The new map only has hostility PVE missions in PvP territory. So it is logical that is some players want an exclusively PVE area then the naturally divided pacific coast makes sense.

1 dura ships make participating in sequential Pvp battles very hard unless all battles are fought off home ports. It will create less PvP.

POTBS did have a 6v6 limit. Early on when the Guadeloupe server still existed and the population was high the French were attempting to flip a port through hostility gains on the open sea with 20 players. Our group of 6 sailed into them targeting the smallest ship. This forced 5 of them plus the small ship to fight our combat ready 6 man group. The 6v6 limit held the other French out. We sunk all the first 6. When we got out of the battle we immediately tagged the weakest ship again. So now we fight another 5 plus the weakest. We sunk all of them. We came out of the second battle and this time they made the tag and we fought their main 6 man group 6v6. We lost one ship and sunk all of them. When the 5 of us got out of the battle the remaining French had fled. Six players sailed into 20 and dominated the sea. I remember thinking that had to be the dumbest mechanic ever devised for open world RvR.

The single most helpful boon to PvP is to become tolerant of other players play styles and to keep the penalties for losing in PvP easily replaceable. It concerns me that you bring up ganking as a bad thing. This is always the first step down an ever spiraling road that destroys all PvP and not just over matched contests. Mr. Doomed is correct in that it is always bad for the game mechanics to regulate PvP. It needs to be regulated in game by players. All PvP MMO's depend on a balance. But it isn't a balance of contestants. It's a balance of play styles. Off set the balance and you end up losing more than just gankers. In fact they are a vital part of some PvP play styles. For example: Defender style PvP and bounty hunter PvP depend on having bad guys to protect against or hunt. If every PvP fight were equal then there become zero need for defenders. If there are no perceived "bad guys" because all contests are honorable then there is no place for bounty hunters or good guys. If there is no great menacing empire Zerging the land then there is no place for a band or allied rebels to fight them. THE absolute worst thing you could ever do to stifle the creativity of players in a sand box is to regulate every PvP contest to be equally matched and identical in formula. As to invisible pop out ambush attacks I do agree on that point. The solution is really simple. If the pop out battle join timer is simply longer than the already outside battle join timer the whole issue of invisible ships goes away.

The vast majority of the game is good and as a sand box much of the "fun" creation should be up to the players. But I would comment of the following mechanics. 1. Long lasting storms are not fun. Often we abandon whole areas of the game because a storm lasts way to long to be bothered to play there. 2. Sealed bottle treasure hunting was more fun back when the wrecks occurs in specific hunt able areas and the treasures worth more. Today a sealed bottle just means a wasted 15 min sail off in a random direction no players are even likely to be encountered. You might as well just give us the treasure when we open the bottle and save us the 15 minutes. 3. Lack of player population is not as fun. Recently, I have started to just log off if I see the server pop below 150. I have spoken to several former clans and players and the lack of , what many feel was the promised PVP1 + PVP2 merge, is grown to a real sore spot for many players that had made plans and been waiting months for this.

The one dura thing has been tried in multiple games. It's not impossible but it goes against sequential Pvp fights so it reduces overall PvP. It also exaggerates the player skill differences over time and it also results to promote in game elitism for those prone to it.Why? Because you and I are very rarely ever going lose a ship. We will be sailing gold with gold mods forever even in 1 dura ships. Those that can't do that will eventually be forced to fight us without even equal gear. They will step down to handicapped gear. Our fights will get easier. Now either the non-hardcore players make a miraculous turn around and start defeating us while sailing those handicapped ships or we just end up dominating the game more. The 1 dura thing only works over time if same skilled players only fight same skilled players. That's not going to happen. To keep our level of PvP challenge up and the frequency of PvP high we're actually better off if they had infinite dura. But then there would be no economic game. So duras need a balance for the sake of Econ and that's about it.

Just because resources are cheap doesn't make an economy. You can craft solo in pvp2 with ease and have no need for more. That's part of the problem. In fact, the only thing worth anything is labor hours. Since the crafters have less need for money there is no need to make a sale. So prices rise. Basically the ship costs a lot because no one needs to sell them.If you have a challenges to get resources the crafter has expenses and therefor greater need to attain a profit to feed back into his craft. Combine that with more frequent PvP on pvp1 and a higher player base changing out ship types to provide a dynamic demand. You need all this in balance to have a flowing economy with competitive pricing. Solo making ships, 100% every part, and then giving them to other players is not an economy. I have visited most nation capitals for pricing and markets even in pvp2 Mortimer Town. You can buy a ship but you can't buy the parts to slap one together. You can't buy notes for mods either. Last time I was in Mort and there was some for sale it was only 2. Most everything in pvp2 is solo crafted and since there are no new crafters trying to attain levels the only thing selling is whole ships. Think of it this way. Consider cars. In Kentucky they mine the ore and smelt it. Kentuckians have jobs and Kentucy merchants sell steel. Texas refineries make gasoline. Texans gave jobs and sell gasoline. In Detroit they assemble it all together into cars. Detroiters have jobs and Detroit merchants sell cars to Kentucky and Texas. That's an economy. Now if some guy in Japan builds an entire car, hauls it to Detroit and sells that car only the one guy in the USA makes money and has a job. That's NOT an economy. Handing out ships in MT or even selling them at high prices is not an economy. There is no economic game there for Econ players to play.

PVP2 has no economy. It doesn't have enough players. As a result you either craft your own ship there or pay the price someone else is asking. It's a market without production competition and low demand. Which means the going rate for anything is going to be sky high.That is the other part of this one dura ship thing. Market prices will bounce all over the place and population drops will create what you see in pvp2 happen faster in pvp2. 1 Dura per ship makes it more sensitive to PvP and population changes.

We play very similar styles. The main difference being you are a pvp2 pirate while I am a pvp1 pirate. As such I believe the pvp1 results in more sequential battles per game night than pvp2. At least that has been my experience playing both servers.What I see happen is that over the course of a week hunting Jamaica or Sunburry I tend to end up sinking the same players often. Maybe it's because they are more willing to PvP than the others or take more risks. Quite often I will fight the same player in multiple battles in the same gaming night. I do not actually fight a large number of different players in sequential battles. Now would this still happen if we had 1 dura ships. I don't think think so. Currently: I sink player A. He losses 1 Dura and some crew if he doesn't surrender. He appears in the nearest port. He calls Player B to up the odds. I fight player A and player B in a more even fight. In the second fight I manage to sink player A again and player B escapes. Player A appears again in the nearest port minus one more dura and some crew. Now he comes back out and has a third helper player C. Players A, B and C now manage to get the best of me and I sink or surrender. 1 Dura method: I sink player A. He has no ready made ships nearby and at best buys a no mod grey of whatever is available in the port he appears in. I fight him in his handicapped state with Player B and may likely sink both. Now player A buys another junk ship with no mods. Player B refuses to PvP at a handicap and quits PvP for the night. Player C now has to fight the same handicapped fight player A had B just lost and he losses his ship. Player C logs out upset at his loss. Player A has finally used up all the nearby junk ships of a class that can fight me. I reign supreme as the hard core PvP player king of that stretch of coastline because the 1 dura rule limited or handicapped my competition. The only way these players have a chance to sequentially Pvp me without handicap is IF I happen to be fighting them right next to their home base. If you think 1 dura will increase the number of Pvp encounters we get to have you are dreaming. It will increase the epeen level of each initial battle had as the value of the first battle becomes higher than the subsequent ones. But it's still decreasing Pvp encounters and benefiting the more hard core players.

So was the ruling that clan warehouses would also be moved automaticaly to the new free city or not?

You couldn't have explained this better Ann. Hard core players will always have the next 1 dura ship and set of mods to pvp with. They're casual opponents will not. All 1 dura ship limits will do is create a solid control of the seas to hard core players who will slowly see less and less pvp while blaming it on something else. We want casual players to PVP and we want them to be able to immediately get back out there once sunk.

No there isn't. It's just my suggestion that introducing new ships as NPC ships, letting us capture and break them down would be more fair than an event lottery.

Other games, including EVE, have shown that this is not the average resulting behavior. Players rarely settle for sailing what is considered second or third best for fear of being laughed off the field of combat. Some do and they can do well. But the majority rather forego pvp than pvp in junk ships that end up being a dunce label identifying players that often lose pvp. No sir, like it or not, human nature will often avoid pvp before taking a step down to pvp. In EVE it usually the same. No one losses a dread or carrier, shakes it off and comes back in in a Battelship or cruiser for another go. They just stop pvp'n till they build another Dread or Carrier. For me, I like pvp, I don't care if they hardly lose a thing in pvp as long as they keep coming back out to fight.

Shouldn't be to much crying. Large nations with large clans will be in a better position to contest or defend a high value region. However, the map is large enough that there will a bunch of less valuable but further out of the way regions for smaller nations and clans to compete over. Should be something for everyone as long as they aren't greedy.Also time zone effects will also be felt. Let's say the region around Key West turns out to be of high value. Typically the higher pop euro teams like the Spanish should dominate it. However, the smaller USA team could create the needed hostility in NA time zone generating a NA time zone PB and steal it away from the Spanish. Two days later the Euro Spanish could steal it back. These valuable region could yo-yo often where the less valuable out if the way ones may be more stable and thereby increase in useful value. Should be interesting to see how this works out.

He is just talking about "Hostility Missions" being open all the time. In those we WANT other players to jump in. We get the most hostility points for fighting players. Besides, if the players inside are set up right it can easily be more deadly for those hopping in later.The 1Dura NPC idea, I suspect, is in response to problems and complaints from previous methods of introduction. Everyone complained about the special event blue prints treasure reward idea. Giving us the bps right away just created complaints by those unlucky enough to get one. Thus way, if they like the new ships, they can always let us break them down to get the bps. This will create more NPC hunting which puts more ships at sea which creates more potential PvP.

To the OP: Nice compiling of the data. I have done my own and we pretty much agree on the conclusions with one possible exception. I weigh in time zone effects. This is how I see your data mixed with mine. Brits spread 120 about 33.5/66.5 NA/Euro time zones. Meanwhile USA fields nearly all of its 40 NA time zone and Dutch nearly all its 70 in Euro. Spain, France, Dane are also nearly all its 235 ( by your numbers) Euro time. Sweden seems split 20/80% NA/Euro. So roughy 23/92 respectively Pirates are a wild card but I would argue their split is 30/70% NA/Euro. So weighted by time zone it's more like: Brits, USA, VP = 80 NA and 150 Euro SV, France, Dane, Spain = 23 NA and 327 Euro The current port battle timers strongly favor the Eastern Antilles & Spain alliance. That should change with the new conquest system. Theoretically Brit,USA, VP should be able to then put more of its stronger NA zone presence into play.

Playing France here. Only alliance I ever vote for is Sweden. I'm pretty sure that's not swinging the map strengths.To a degree the Pirates brought this situation on all of us and especially themselves by playing "port pacman" with all the undefended frontiers around pvp2. You can expect anyone who looks at the map to view pirates as anything other than the major threat of the server. Did they need all those unused ports? No. Unless a player takes the time to study the political grid votes it's hard to look beyond the map to determine active player strengths. If you look at total votes and divide by roughly 8 you can determine a nations active player base. True, some will be those that avoid hard PvP but you still get the rough head count. On a server pop this low, logically a high pop nation should never ally to a another top pop nation.

If the NA Devs have a business head on their shoulders they will time the release to match the new "Pirates of the Carribean 5" movie release in 2017. If not the release at least plan a short marketing blitz around it. I think the initial release/blitz population under such condition will be at least what we saw back in January and probably even more. I think we will see x3 pvp servers required at first. Even though this is an alpha, in reality most of the players are treating it as the real play and as such it is still a mini example of what we should expect of player behaviors following release. So we should see initial high interest tapering down after 6 months. Followed by a sort of leveling out period at 9-10 month. At the end of which we will likely be back down to 1 server maybe two. To avoid these issues we're seeing today, I think the Devs should acquire access to a server that proves to be reliable for world wide customers. This should then become the main server.However to be sure, it wouldn't be a bad idea to test putting the world onto the euro server now to see how it truly effects low ping countries. This is assuming they're business model prefers to favor the current euro based server for their own reasons. Following release I see no issue with having x3 servers again. But after about 8-10 month players will likely need to be consolidated again. But hopefully, this time the server is planned ahead of time to be the one offering the best world wide ping.

I think you might be missing my point. Most of you all are arguing the wrong thing. You are arguing to KEEP the north American time zone players separated. This is not a good thing as the isolated populations are to small to fully utilize the games functions. Even for testing. The issue should be that the chosen main server can not support the ping of world wide customers and should be moved. It has a 2500 man limit and back in January we actually hit that resulting in pvp3. The game most certainly has a critical population mass for the size of play area. For example: lets say pvp2 was the Baltic Sea and only had four nations. At this size 200 players would be enough to utilize many of the mechanics and aspects that get left out of PVP2 and north American time PVP1. Quick example is econ. PVP2 has almost no economy to speak of. PVP1 does because ship selling and goods selling is a 24/7 activity and so has 1000+ players competing. However, PvP1 north American time is abysmal for port battle mechanics since the players are spread all around. Ofcourse pvp2 isn't much better. I do not know that there are any or many pvp1 transfers actually looking to get back into pvp2. There is on average more pvp on pvp1 and the weekends with the euros are a treat. Short of Tuetonic I don't know of anyone that wants pvp1 gear moved to pvp2. I certainly do not. As to your second comment. Ys I have and do play both servers. The nuances of each are no stranger to me. Though there may be good things to each the underlying issue is the north american zone population is divided for no real good reasons. Pvp2 has no economic game, it has almost no privateering game. It does have port battles of limited nature and players currently schedule PBs to have some opposition. When you are scheduling your port battle with you enemies so they show up you are no longer RVR simulating a war. PVP1 offers more than pvp2 if you can stand the connection but even it is lacking in conquest mechanics participation. which will also hamper testing the new mechanics some what. Lastly "Is having more participation on one server worth losing those that don't want the merger?" Quite frankly yes. There is nothing making them so special as to regard special treatment around the rest. Point in fact this week I was asked to explore two pvp2 clans potential of returning. (OMG and Purge) Both were highly active French and Pirate clans on pvp2. After some discussion I asked what was there greatest issue with returning. Bear in mind both are showing interest in the new conquest system. However both groups essentially sited the lack of the merger as the greatest deterrent to conquest pvp and they're return. Now these two clans are one example of players that left pvp2 both clans are 20 men each. So that is roughly 40 players. Now to put this in perspective that 40 players is roughly 30% of the ENTIRE population playing PVP2 at any given day. So I would ask you what makes the hold outs more special than the rest?

Cold hard facts time. You of you are grasping at political style spin arguement said to back your stances. So as someone seriously playing both servers the following is what you should be considering and arguing. This game currently covers a large play area. The competing teams are dispersed across this play area. It doesn't matter for PVE server. But to fully utilize the game feature in each nation a certain threshold population is required. 114 players online in PvP2 USA evenings ain't it. Meanwhile pvp1 USA prime time runs higher in pop than pvp2 by about 10-20%. Somehow you need to combine North American player bases together. I sail for an hour in pvp2 an never see another player who isn't an ally. To PvP this past week ALL we ever do is goto MT. Just that one spot on the map is all that works for practical player hunting on pvp2. On pvp1 we goto KPR, MT or Sunbury. Not much better but still better. Somehow you need to get the North Americans together. Ping isn't a very good arguement for having two servers. This game euro pop is almost 4 times larger than the two North American pops put together. Like it or not it's a euro game currently. If a player plays on pvp2 to get a good ping that is just a patch to a symptom of the main problem. Which is that the main server probably isn't good enough. You might save the Aussie players that will put up with low pop a RvR but you end up losing the other North Americans that crave high pop RVR. You make it sound likes its all about keeping the low ping guys. It's not. If you have to cut them loose the get even more high pop players then you cut em loose. Unless you can show figures that there is this huge Aussie population that would love their own server. If not it's a safe bet to assume there are more high pop RvR preferring USA players out there that have already quit player due to low pop on both servers.

If 6 players are camping your battle screen for an hour. First understand your being camped by x6 desparate players. Second that those six are not fighting your team somewhere else. Third if your solo in a fast ship your odds still aren't that bad of avoiding that counter gank. Fourth if your hunting right off their capital it's a tactic they should be able to employ. they current system isn't that bad. The main reasons any of us get invisibly ambushed by battle screen sitters is we don't read the clues and the battle exit join timer matches the battle join timer. If the exit timer were just increased 30sec this whole thing of being ambushed goes away. Counter ganking doesn't but, as mentioned above, that mostly only comes into play when you choose to hunt off their capital or popular ports.

There are secondary problem that develpoe when changing rules around the battle screen wait and even the exit points. I would suggest a simpler solution: Never remove the battle swords from the OS. This way the battle isn't hidden and players sailing by can see how many ships may be inside with the potential to jump out. Then that player can sail wide around that battle to avoid potential ambushes. Everything else remains the same. The same should be true for epic battle instances. Now some may say this would lead to people camping the battles. They may. But they still dont know when you may exit and if your ship were really there on the OS they should be able to see it ahead of time like every other ship.