Bach

Looking at the new patch and without the ability to teleport ships building them in strategic locations will become more important. I'd like to create some player made content in the form of primary multi-national merchant markets in key locations. So I'm looking for true Econ minded players to stock and create competitive markets in the following free cities: Key West, Ile-a-Vachi and Plymouth. How you get the goods to them and what mark up on materials is certainly up too you. What need is to create the stockpiles of necessary ship building materials and competition. By using these three hubs we create three centralized markets. Players can then visit, buy goods and either sail them out or mail them to another free City. Similarly suppliers can either sail goods in to maximize profits or mail them in from frontier producer free cities. If we get this content up and running then empires and more can be built from them. So become a merchant prince of the New World! Get at least one raw material or product up on a market nearest you. KEY WEST ILE-A-VACHI PLYMOUTH

Players don't run away because they fear the costs of losing. They just don't like losing. Most will run away in a free ship if a battle doesn't look promising. Incidentally, most payers consider a promising fight to be greater than 1 to 1 odds of a win. Its just how it is.

The usual "OMG people hiding in ports and battles will gank me" crowd demanded the timer shortened to reduce them losing dura. Yes, it means YOUR friends and team mates also can't help you any longer. Ever notice the anti-gank crowd are a big collection of solo non-team players? Maybe in an RvR game that aren't the players we really want to cater to. Just saying.

You didn't just leave a non- regional with a Santi, 3 Pavels and a half dozen 3rds. But let's say you did. With that mix mashed fleet of crap half the guns in the field can not even penetrate the armor on the ships that actually belong in that battle. The sailing characteristics are also all off for what fleets we would expect in that contest. So it's still not realistically testing anything.

That is supposed to be a Regional capital port battle. La Gross Ventures, cutters and Connie? Your still not realistically testing anything.

When I first joined pvp2 the nightly population was around 1100. The USA was dominating the North the Pirates were dominating the East and the Brits the West. PvP was right outside the port, easy to find and dynamic. Then as players settled into max level and RvR became more and more about battles only against towers the population started to shrink. At 400 population and amid merger rumors our clans either moved to pvp1 early or opted to wait for the merge and RvR changes. So I went to pvp1. It was around 800 players at USA prime time. PvP was good but RvR still seem d to be drifting into empty tower battles. Just slower than it took pvp2 to get there. More players drifting into taking a break until the merges or RvR changes once the pop dropped to 400. This week the pop on pvp1 at North American time has been a steady 150-200. PvP is still good but isolated to only a few spots. RvR is mostly dead compared to months ago. PvP2 hold outs you are wasting your time clinging on. At 150 pop pvp1 is just as much a close knit group as your 68 pop. There are 8 nations. You have to enough for 8 men/nation. So your not server wide testing anything effectively. We have enough to for 20men/nation so we aren't either. RvR is essentially dead on both servers. Neither of these two servers are going to make it to August when the RvR patch finally comes out. If the players on break aren't getting the RvR upgrade then they may as well get the merge. All your going to get us by clinging to the sinking ship of pvp2 is both servers sunk before August. I can sympathize with all your comments above. They sound great but they aren't for the reality we're in. Let it go. Come join us on pvp1 and we'll both move forward. There isn't enough players on pvp1 for your ping to suck that bad that it effects a game this slow.

Certainly, now first your group needs to define what kind of role you wish to play in the game. From there you go out and make stuff happen. I know that sounds vague but part of that is because everything starts as a blank slate.Let's assume your group fancies themselves independent developers of the new world. You pick your goals. Secure a regional port area and build a sustaining empire like the Nassau pirates in Black Sails. To do this you need to explore and pick your location. You want it to be a regional port near a Free City. This will make your empire prosper as the regionals give better NPC harvesting options and the proximaty to the free city will open it up to trade with all nations. Once you have the area picked form up a team, recruit some extras from your nation and capture the regional for our base. Then you'll also want to capture the nearest iron, coal, silver and copper ports. This will help set up your empire for your nation. Start by getting the base resources for ship building set up in the market at Free City. Perhaps keeping a personal clan reserve at the regional. Advertise your empire to your nation and your free city trade to the rest of the game. Now you have made content. Others will come and interact with your content creating more content. Your empire may flourish as allies move into the free city and trade with others, NPC/mission runners may flock to your regional base. Your empire will grow. Privateers may hunt your coast and you may choose to kill them, trap them or force their fidelity to your empire. You may become attacked by another empire. You may be called upon to support your mother nation. Anyway, you get the idea, we first have to create our own content to build upon. If you ever played EVE the frontier space out of the beta was as virgin of content as NA. Everything you see there today in the vast expanse of the frontier in that game was a result of the first handful of players moving out there and building something. Everything else came from that start.

When the Pacific coast patch comes in this situation should resolve itself.

I'm not so sure. I have spent many a gaming year bounty hunting live players. We're mostly creatures of habit. More so once the crew patch removes ship teleports. This should cause players to become less random in their movements in game. Consider a squadron of British players for example. They most likely have a defensive ship near Kingston, an offensive ship near their chosen battle front, an NPC hunter/mission runner somewhere and a merchant ship near their factories. Once the crew patch comes into play these ships become dedicated to the regions they are in. So even if you gave the sea Hunter day old information the odds are still high that this particular players and ships will still be operating in these areas.Additionally being creatures of habit, if we track this day old data over time patterns of national or clan specific activity will emerge. Let's say I'm bounty hunting some dastardly pirate in the Black Hand clan. If I track his clan mates and find their patterns I may just collect his bounty. Besides all that, like someone else said, it's better than nothing.

I like the idea of the reports costing gold and perhaps make them only available in port.

Sea hunter players, like yourself, are under represented in these forums. You don't need to know where your prey is. You just need some clues to set the hunt in motion. This is kind off what I thought rumors or even bribes might be like. Say you visit the port master of La a Habana, slip him a few gold pieces and he gives you a list of ships in port or that visited in the last game day. Something like that. Would also allow for bounty hunting.I recently spent and hour talking to a well educated Econ player. He taught me things about the current system I didn't know as well as some of his complaints. To him, his game is in defeating other merchants in the markets. When he sees certain commodity prices rise or fall he knows if he is winning or not. The true merchant princes of the game are also under represented as most of the forum is filled with solo crafters who have no real need for a true economy to play in. There is more, much more, to a sand box than just RvR.

The idea of making the prime server the North American one to balance the connections warrants looking into.But the rest of it is just your preference of playing the game and has nothing to do with testing it. The goal of one big server with the pacific being the PVE zone needs to be tested before launch. I realize you are enjoying the community you have developed in pvp2. I liked mine as well while I was there. I moved to pvp1 because it is where testing can happen in a more likely setting. When the game goes live there isn't any guarantee we would still even be able to maintain the community developed in pvp2. It's not even likely. Once the new Pirates of Carribean 5 movie comes out and if we get the launch ready by then the population should explode. Those tight knit communities on pvp2, pvp3 and even some that developed on pvp1 will all be changing anyway.

It's a good bet that when it gets to crossing the ocean our stuff is probably traveling on the same lines by that point. Odds are the issues exist somewhere more local before that point. Might try asking your provider if there is a better way for you.

The plan was to convert all your stuff into redeemable items tagged to your account. When you get to pvp1 they will be there for you to withdraw whe you are ready. Meaning you are free to join other nations or even tryout out different ones switching around. Once you have your mind made up and nation picked out you then redeem all your stuff onto that new character.

I'm a US players. Started on PvP2 and moved to PvP1 when pop shrunk amid rumors of the future merge. Been waiting a few months to get my pvp2 blue prints and stuff moved over. In the mean time I've been playing on pvp1. North American times we tend to have as many or more players online than pvp2 did. The pvp has been good and the nations seem higher organized than pvp2 was months ago. Ping rate has never been an issue yet. Why don't you want to come over to pvp1 and play with us?

Playing for the better part of the year now I have a recommendation for a hot fix and one for future game enhancement. The map is large and sail times can be long. In many ways this a good thing. In others not so much. With the advent of the crew patch coming players will find themselves further challenged. I don't mind the long sail so much if I know what I most likely am getting at the end of it. It's the long sails for nothing that cause the problems. Hot fix - solution is a simple Heat style map modification to allow players to note where pvp is most likely occurring. The system already tracks how many battles are in play and as such should be data already at hand. Convert this data into a visual on the game "m" map so players can deduce where pvp is most likely to occur before they set out on a long fruitless sail. Long term - Rumors passed from sailor to sailor, merchant to buyer, brothel whispers and even missionary news was commonly passed anytime people met in the 17-1800s. This effect should be available in game. Perhaps it's a heat map showing battles, trade purchases or rumors of SOLs docked in port. Rumors could be less than super accurate ways to get player interaction going and help facilitate players being able to utilize more of the sand box.

I believe the comment also included that goods could not be transferred across Panama. This would isolate all but the captain going there and choosing to PVE. It also creates a new player safe zone of sorts.

It's good to see the plan. Most of the former players/testers I talk too are waiting on mostly just two things. Server merges and War peace/pirates updates. I'll gladly test fishing, crew and the lot but it would be nice to have a higher population to a RvR with and I don't see a resurgence of population until August by this plan. Still not all that bad but some low action pvp days ahead. Merging PvP1 and PVP2 in June would probably help tide this over until August.

Scenario - A pirate clan decides to wage a raiding campaign on the other side of the map. All their ship building is done by one pirate ship builder from a base on their original side of the map. He is the only pirate that stands to lose blue prints. So the plan is simple, they have a sponsor, perhaps a customer paying bounties, that agrees to supply the pirates with ships and a base across the map. Rather than sail all their crap across the map ALL pirates except the ship builder liquidate their stuff and give choice items to him, pirates staying behind and low level Alts. Then *poof* they make Swedish characters on the other side of the map. Sail to the sponsors base. The sponsor could be Swedish, French, Dane or Dutch and pick up their new ships and gold. Then maybe they play Swedish for awhile and when the time is right they just attack the nation they've infiltrated and go back pirate again keeping all they sponsor provided arsenal. Now if the attack was per plan to shift back to pirate at the time they attacked the gross venture. The clan tag may have already been prepared and a quick click could have instantly put him back in the original pirate clan. Just one more reason players shouldn't keep everything when they go pirate. Still wouldn't stop this "infiltration tactic" but it would slow it down a bit. Not sure, when the game goes live, if we will still be able to keep xp when shifting nations. So it might take care of itself in the future. If one of the pirates was willing to make the sail across the map to set up the initial outpost for Sweden they could be their own sponsors.

Unless we're talking 1st or 2nd rates most player ships aren't worth it to capture. Most players pvp in a 5 dura frigate or 4 dura 4th loaded with purple and gold outfittings. A single gold extra pump or steel tool box costs as much as the entire frigate. No one is going to be grabbing up one dura player capped ships and using them for anything but throw alway ships. Which isn't bad. I'm just pointing out that there isn't any need to capture every single ship and that they already come with a huge drawback if you choose to invest the crew to bother taking them.

Reads like this is really just a tweak to the Econ game. Expanding the resource and materials markets. Don't think it's going to effect most of the players in this forum other than maybe putting one or two more cargo ships on the sea to be attacked. So this will be better judged/tested by the Econ minded players as this change mostly only effects them. On the plus side it creates new markets for players to get into. On the negative side it will make it a little harder for solo ship builders. But that is also a plus as solo ship building tends to be an overall negative on the game economy. Should be interesting.

I'm not sure this is accurate. I pvp probably as much as anyone here. Most battles don't actually tax my crew unless they are brutally close matched or I choose to board the target. The standard chase profile battle generally doesn't get much of my crew killed. Broad side to broadside slug fest will get my crew killed but at the end of those I am usually sailing to port to avoid the $100,000 gold worth of repair kit bill on repairs anyway. Now if I chose to board the target it's a different story in the chase. Any boarding will usually cost me 20% crew or more. Now if I'm capping a cargo ship the point is moot as I'm sailing it to port right after anyway. If it's a player combat ship it first needs to be one good enough for me to bother capturing. To be honest, most one dura player combat ships aren't going to be worth the effort on most occasions. About the only time I can think of that I regularly board a ship and do not want to come back to port afterwards is when doing missions and I want to jack up the gold by sending the ship to the admiralty. So maybe this is more of a PVE issue. For most pvp in the future I would just start using crew built ships with extra hammocks to be able to do sequential pvp actions.

There are two issues that need to balance. Well more than two. But I mean just with ship teleportations. Speed with which a player can get into PVP. Teleporting ships helps this. However, it also means ships spend less time at sea in transit and need only move in prepared attack groups. This results in less likely hunting style pvp as it favors group pvp more. Ship available to be hunted at sea. Merchant ships, ships in transition to duty stations, mission runners or explorers. These are the ships that give the lone pirate or privateer something to do in the game besides joining the large RvR groups. For this style of pvp to thrive there has to be players moving ships at sea. The forums are filled with players wanting quicker travel, shorter distances to missions and cargo teleports. But if we get all that what happens? We teleport our hunting ships to the enemy coast only to find there are no ships there to hunt for all the same good reason that got our ship there fast. The enemy just smuggler teleported his ships to future battles. The mission runners just teleported to out of the way areas of the map and teleport their booty back. The merchants just set up free towns and once per day teleport all their good back to the capital. So we move fast but there are much less ships at sea. There has to be a balance between the two. If we want to be able to hunt targets we all have to be willing to be that target for someone else from time to time. I'm not sure what the middle ground is. But we are currently testing unlimited teleports and its seems right to test zero teleports and see what the real deal should be.

I have to second this. It's totally unrealistic that the NPC ships fight to the death. It didn't really matter as the crew replenished at the end of the battle. But this mechanic may need some looking into. 22 merchantmen on a Traders cutter fighting to the death against a 120 man Brig over 60 Pine logs? Really?

Decades ago I used to play D&D with this player that would collect weapons from every encounter we defeated. I used to picture his character looking like a porcupine with swords and daggers stashed all over his body. I used one of his extra weapons as a door stop once but that was the most use they ever got. In NA pvp players have the same tendency to try to collect every ship. In truth most will never sail a one dura ship into serious pvp because they can't use their gold mods on them. I'd bet most capped ships end up just being sold to the AI or broken up. I have no intention of capping every ship I defeat and sailing back to port for storage.