Bach
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Posts posted by Bach
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Not sure why anyone would ever surrender. The only thing you gain is factory slots. If you even need them.
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Your not fighting pirates. Your fighting a nation flying a black flag. If they were all flying Dutch flags you would likely be in the same predicament you are now. That's not a slam on the pirates or the USA. It's just how it is. The pirates are a nation and can employ mostly the same tactics of any nation. Those few advantages sited wouldn't have changed the current outcome had they never existed. Pirates still have the largest pvp player base, highest tech gear to field and a close starting proximity to the desired target. If they had a purple flag, a different name and no pirate advantages there would be no great changes to the outcome. The player base, ability to field max level ships and proximity to target are great challenges to overcome.
Now, that all said, if the pirate nation ever becomes "piratey" this event will probably go down as ancient history. With the delay in PB's and the mix of ships needed to fight various ports the ability to "Blitzkrieg" a nation into abismal morale in a matter of days will not likely be seen again. If you want to site an advantage that allows a nation to sweep ports of another and break the will to fight in short order this would be it. Not teleporting ships to outposts. i often wonder if it was luck or plan that the massive surge attack occurred the week before the rule set changes.
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Is this really likely to be a problem? If ships are stationed at a port wouldn't they just undock and sail directly into the port battle? You can't realistically intercept them. Now does this mean the enemy might station 25 ships in the port ahead of time? Yes. But that only means you get a guaranteed contested port battle. It doesn't mean the defender will win. Not to mention the logistic required to pull it off. First they have to reasonably know you will attack that port. All 25 would have to either have outposts in that port or they have to log off in that port fore going any other play on the character until you attack. Not to mention they would have had to sail all the ships to that port ahead of time. Again, worst case scenario, after the enemy manages to jump through all these hoops they just get a fair chance to defend the port.But if we have 2. then, block the instant teleport to the city that is under attack, because if they put ships their, there is no way to intercept them.
Way to many of us are getting way to comfortable with easy one sided port battles. Game needs the RvR revamp as soon as possible before we all start looking for lopsided port battles as the expected norm.
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Looking at the port battle posts for SORRY fleet in the other thread you are using mostly nothing but Ingermanlands and just a few Connie while taking almost the entire gulf. If what you say is true, you don't seem to be following your own advice since you mostly use Ingers. Me thinks you doth protest to much.Going by memory is a lot i not use a conny, maybe they changed the values some patch ago , but i remember conny with extra planking liveoak buildstrenght having something around 8600 hp
while an inger with same setup have 7500?
Conny is the most Op ship in game, there is pretty much no reason to use any other frig, beside for trinco in a role of ganker, conny have much dps, much tank fairly fast and manouvrable.
inger before superarmor patch was better in term of dps, but not tank. if you reduce even more tank of inger, conny become the only ship that will be used in pb.
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Battle lengths-With the new penetration model to shorten your fights you need to get into close range and aim below the waterline when a swell lifts the target up. Being up wind will also tend to make the targets waterline visible. Staying back at range now yields longer battles unless you are taking masts down. Boarding is as quick as it ever was.
Motivation - crafting and pvp are currently the only ways to get new combat ships. Crafting is so the Econ players have a game to play. When we could all capture all the 3rd rates we wanted there was no point to the Econ game other than buying materials to level. Now that we're mostly end game crafter there would be little reason to build and sell ships if we could still just capture easy NPCs. So although this may not be as easy for some players it allows Econ players a purpose in the game.
Upgrades- other than marines and powder monkeys Econ players can make you better upgrades than you will likely get from a port battle. Just ask for one in your nation chat, be ready to provide the medium notes and you'll probably get the exact upgrade you want.
Economy- though it may not be for you and I there are players that specific play for the Econ game. We have to have a challenging Eco contest for the merchant minded to compete against each other. Which is good because the more they compete the lower prices of ships become.
Prices- the reason prices are so high and not following demand is because players had realized they could just put up compaswood factories, harvest the wood for 500 gold and sell it to NPC for 1500 gold. This was creating a gold glut and hyper inflation. I'm guessing you are not much into Econ and may never come across the "compass wood to riches" trick. This is why the new patch capped NPC buying to 25000 units. The was no actual player driven economy where players were using this in mass. It was an NPC driven unlimited buyer creating gold so prices on everything went sky high. New rule will help cap the amount of free gold generated by NPCs and make player generated gold more valuable.
I hope this helps. Battles now need to be fought at closer ranges, Coronades are more deadly in pvp, boarding players generates better rewards. Economy should become more player driven and prices should start to drop. But we shall see.
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I believe this problem is slightly addressed with the crew changes that will be coming. As posted by admin (can't find the post on phone) a smaller nation is able to field more crew per captain than a larger one, giving them an advantage.
I've been reviewing that crew change for this very effect. However, I believe it will fail as a method of Zerg control. In most games a Zerg consists of a horde of second rate or inferior gear swarming an enemy. In NA the zergs can use top of the line gear in a swarm. Though the crew cost may change this the cost only comes into play when the last dura is lost. Now a traditional inferior gear Zerg tends to take losses constantly. However, a top end gear Zerg almost never takes many losses. The end result will most likely be that in NA the high tech Zerg will suffer minimal crew loss. Meanwhile their victims will have decimated crews for attempting to stand up to the Zerg in lesser numbers of high tech gear. So it's going to punish those rolled over more than the Zerg.
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If you want to help non-Zerg players to survive along with zergs you have to make the play area so large that they can move away from the Zerg and the Zerg can't control areas that big.
The game map is fairly large as it is. However it has almost zero Nuetral territory for a group wishing to build up away from a Zerg can use. Also, once a Zerg rolls through an area that area remains in the zergs control with zero effort to maintain it. This allows zergs to steamroll zones without needing to stop and secure the captured territory.
A simple change. If ports are not used or visited regularly by the conquering nation then they should simply revert to Nuetral or the original owner. This would make Zerging more land than you can use pointless. It will also free up land for players to move into that might want a place to build up again after being Zerged. In any event, if the Spanish over ran Nassau in 1725 and simply packed up and continued on to Cuba? I'm pretty sure the port would return back to being a pirate haven again in short order. The current game situation where we don't need occupying forces and the populace just magically becomes loyal conquered citizens isn't all that realistic anyway.
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We're play testing the alpha even though many of us are just playing the game. Odds are we have learned everything we're going to learn from low pop situations on current pvp2. Question now is if the game can still be dynamic under the new rule changes as one big pvp sand box. Maybe it can now or maybe it won't be able to handle the load or player attitudes in a big mix. As a player that still has most of his stuff on pvp2 I am not worrying about it too much. If the game went live tomorrow pvp2 population would just swell up way beyond the "small town" feel anyway. So it's not really worth arguing for a secluded server at this time in testing. Maybe when we get closer to live. But even then we may end up with high pops in both the EU and nort American time zones. May not be able to get small town again after release without a extra server set up for it.Two main thoughts:
(1) The developers have done a great job making sure the merge is going to work relatively smoothly and fairly!! I mean, two months ago, did anyone think they would be able to keep ALL of their stuff in a merger? I think some of the drain from PVP2 and PVP3 came from the fear that you would lose everything in a merge. So thank you developers. You didn't have to be so fair, and yet you were. A good sign of things to come!
(2) I tend to agree with SPHINX, PVP2 is a healthy thriving place, that offers gamers a North American option (language, time zone, ping), and a different player dynamic. The major thing that has hurt PVP population has been the fear of a merge with asset loss during the merge. So people jumped ship. PVP2 has a "small town" vibe. Players know each other. Any single player can help change the arc of his nations future. When you are one of 100 (or 60, or 50) active players in your country, you're important. Your presence can swing battles. You voice can change national politics. When you are one in 600 or more, not so much. Sure the population could use a bit of a boost, but what you can possibly expect with rumor after rumor of merger wipes flooded the community for months? I think if the developers said that PVP2 was here to stay for a while, the population would spike, from new blood and people coming back home. Plus with the ability to merge servers without loss, I wonder what the harm would be in keeping PVP2 alive for as long as players will support it?
So I guess my point is, PVP2 can serve a purpose for the developers. Its very different place than PVP 1. Another option for its customers. And options are good!! If players prefer the "city life" of PVP 1, great. If they want the north american server/ small town life where everybody knows your name? Great. They can go to PVP 2. Options!
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Random encounters that only exist on the unknown frontiers popping up would add a lot of flavor to the game.
Perhaps while sailing along a deserted coast you encounter a friendly native village that wants to trade trinkets for gold and silver.
Maybe you meet hostile natives. Maybe they have captured someone important and you need to rescue them before they get eaten.
Maybe a group of missionaries want to hire you to take them and their goods out to the frontier.
Maybe sailing along those numerous barren islands you find a marooned sailor with some secret to buried treasures.
Maybe you find a shipwreck to salvage.
Game needs such stuff to get end game level players moving ships around for pirates and privateers to contest.
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Perhaps I can offer some badly needed perspective to this discussion. Right now I think most of us are only looking at this from one sided narrower perspectives.
So, it's a pvp server with an open world sand box for pvp hunting. There are players that want to be real pirates, privateers, officers, profiteers and since they joined a pvp server they are hoping to fight me while doing it. Problem is, they have to find me.
Now if I look for pvp, I log in and if I really want pvp I have to sail to an enemy capital. Once there I grab a player if I can. By the end of the battle I'll be surrounded by enemy players outside. As I should be since I did sail to their capital. But why am I sailing to their capital looking for 1v1 pvp? Because I at least know I'll find something there even if realistically I should get my butt kicked on the second round. If I don't do this I may pick some spot hope for the best and sail for an hour while half watching TV. This usually doesn't work so well so I may just take a mission and pvp or hit some traders.
Now if I PVE, I can grab a mission right off the dock. Sail out to it and fight. I generally just AFK sail for how ever much time it take by calculation to get near the mission. I'm not sure what the point of having the mission so far away from the port is. I'm guessing they want others to have a chance to pvp me. Otherwise the mission could just be triggered from the port. But the jokes on the devs because I usually don't hang at my capital. I hang on the frontier. So I just AFK sail because your chances of finding me to pvp are lottery like. Funny thing too, out in the frontier missions I run into French NPC 3rd rates that payout huge rewards even though the French and any port of importance are no where around. Sometimes I'll just collect stuff at my frontier factories. Here is the really funny part. You also have only lottery level chances of stopping my trader. I often run AFK with over a half million gold or more of goods in my hold. I should be a pirates wet dream. You should want to hunt me, get you friends to hunt me and flood the game with pvp players looking to hunt targets like me. But the laughs on you as I don't even leave the frontier. Why should I? The merchants at the frontier ports have just as much money and commerce capacity as London itself. So I AFK sail and you don't get to pvp my merchant ships.
Basically, Slamz is right in a way. The frontier towns are as good as the capitals and there are no real reasons in game for me to ever even use the capital or a regional. Not very realistic and worse it's really stifling open world pvp because that depends on players moving in predictable patterns. If there are no actual market hubs, military bases or ports of more importance then there are no predictable travel routes.
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We're testing this game. If you think the pvp servers are currently healthy log in and look at the low populations. Something isn't working. Part of it is probably players reaching max levels and simply not finding anything else to do they find entertaining. Now on a pvp server that shouldn't be a normal problem as the xp ladder isn't really the goal. Pvp should still be happening at end game levels.
Now how does that fact tie into this arguement? Because we don't necessarily have a pvp server or game just because we name it so. The OP is correct that the many of remaining active players are spending large amounts of time secluded into PVE instances. I know I currently do. Why? is probably a varied reason for each individual player. But the point is there isn't a lot of pvp on the "pvp" server. part of the OP suggestion is based around the idea that we simply can't find each other all that often so we just fall back and PVE. This is probably true in some cases. Possibly many cases. Concentrating player movements would make it easier for us to find each other for pvp. Theoretically if the opportunities for open world pvp increase, the pvp should increase and the population of players interested in pvp should increase.
I'm not sure basing it around missions is the best way or even the only way. But if we want open world pvp, other than port battles, we need reasons for players to be at sea available for pvp and they need to be able to find each other.
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I don't think it will motivate them to split up their group. The issue is that it generally takes anywhere from 30min to an hour to find a pvp fight. Once you find a fight the closer it is to fair the longer it tends to last. So after sailing potentially an hour a player could then end up sitting outside a battle for an hour more. 2hrs of game play for zero pvp action. It's not like it's their fault that the fight they happened to find is off balance. They can't control whom they find. There is no amount of rewards we can likely offer most players to make that situation acceptable.If the PVP Feats regarding Lordship are tailored to simply have a negative impact towards these tactics, meaning a 3v5 has decisive positive Victory Points and a 6v2 rewards negative or next to none, then many might ( keyword: might ) split the hunt groups into elements of twos, like in a flight sim.
Small and large battles remains the quickest method to get a fair fight in a reasonable amount of time. Expecting them on the OW, given sail times and battle times of NA, just isn't going to be practical.
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By doing this you would create areas where players interacted with a village or mining outpost by sailing up next to it and stoping. This would leave their ship visible on the open sea and attackable by enemies. It removes the safe hiding spot that all ports are in some locations that are true frontier areas and not real ports. This would increase pvp, reduce port hiding, ambushes and add some realism to some of the smaller frontier ports.
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I know there are some changes coming but I would like to throw out some basic ideas that might give end game players something to do between port battles.
Letters of Marque- available From the missions screen. A list of players with bounties on their heads placed by other players. The screen provides the list of names and the last port visited by the target. Alternately the letter may be an item purchased carried by the hunter that may be reviewed at any time. This would facilitate bounty hunting deep in enemy territory.
Fleet Order Intercepts- the main use of brigs and such was to deliver mail, orders, new officers and assorted other things to and from the various squadrons of the fleet. Some NPCs traveling near capitals and regional capitals should be carrying these things. If your brave enough to hunt them off the enemy port you might get lucky and captures some enemy fleet orders. Or maybe a nice new pair if socks sewn by aunt Mildred. But if you get the fleet orders, the item will allow you a one time use to teleport to the next port battle by that enemy as if you had an outpost there. Since you knew where it was going to be. This would help get more players into port battles and give end games a reason to patrol off enemy regional capitals. If we make it only regional capitals it will potentially put more end gamers sailing in the same area.
Blockading- some type of patrol off the port of a future port battle that will shift the BR win ratio in favor of the attacker.
Patrolling- some type of patrol off the port of a future port battle that will shift the BR win ratio in favor of the defender.
I'm sure other have mentioned similar stuff before but it can't hurt to bring it up.
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Relax, as posted it's only temporary.
It wouldn't likely matter even if it only lasted temporarily one week. A month or more is probably what it would be. War gamers and especially PVPrs are a different breed. They don't log in a couple times a week or even take weeks off. Most of us log in every single day for our pvp fix. The 1.5 BR rules biggest flaw is that it destroys team play. No matter how well intentioned. As soon as one member of a dedicated team finds another game even somewhat exceptable to the rest our chances of ever seeing them in NA again shrink greatly. The more solo oriented players would probably not be affected but we would begin to lose the teams if we ever bring the 1.5BR rule back no matter how temporary.
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My posted suggestion is just on the previous page. Simple roll back to the build before they added the land in the battles and you don't have positional reinforcement OR 1.5 BR.No offense intended but debating this topic with you is like going round and round in a circle getting nowhere. Having no BR mechanic combined with the positional reinforcements the way they are currently implemented is bad....simple as that. The discussion of the 1.5 BR mechanic was to be a temporary one since they can't change the current code....at least that is what they are telling us. Personally speaking the 1.5 BR mechanic probably does not need to be around when they finalize the new engagement mechanic to test. But I simply do not understand how anyone would argue that allowing slower ships that are way behind a pursued ship to magically spawn in front of the target is ok?
As far as the personal attacks and dribble you were spouting toward me I don't think it is very fair. If my opinion differs from yours that does not imply that I feel superior to you or anyone else. These forums are for discussing our opinions on game mechanics and providing feedback. Anyone who is not open to varying opinions or point of views during TESTING than maybe testing is not your cup of tea?
It is by far the easiest temporary solution to keep everyone happy. Especially since the 1.5 BR rule didn't really effect positional entry anyway.
if things seem circular it's because in the end you have to come back to the truth. You asked us to test this new patch and we did.
It didn't fix hidden battle entries
It didn't stop ganking
The positional system was prone to abuse
The land was good eye candy and occasionally affected the battles. Some needed to turn down graphics settings to battle.
It did greatly hamper rescue pvp.
It split groups up for an hour or more at a time.
It allowed gankers to abuse the rule to hunt right next to defended national capitals.
It also allowed lone wolf or duo style pvp players to roam the seas without fear of getting overwhelmed when running into larger groups. Not a bad thing but only favors some players at other's expense.
It frequently prevented mission runners going to and from missions from getting help when attacked.
It stopped most of the casual large scale open world pvp combats.
It also promotes the use of fail fit boats.
Far more negatives than positives. The one group most helped by the new rules are lone and duo hunters. I suspect this style of PVPrs tend to champion the 1.5 rule in the forums most. I don't believe most of the forum posters here regularly get ganked. But the worst of it all. We did what you asked and tested it. We gave you the results. You repealed the rule and gave us hope you were listening to us. Then at the first chance to go back to it and with a weak excuse, as it only marginally effects positional ganks, you dash all those hopes that the testing mattered. In the end it appears to only be all about non-team oriented pvp styles.
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So basically you took one word "PVE" out of all he was posting and ignored the rest.Don't say PVE players because that's just laughable....I do slightly more than ZERO PVE and I will say that a temporary 1.5 BR mechanic is better than the slightly steamy pile of dung that we have currently. Half the "PvP" I hear everyone talking about in nation and global chat revolves around port hiding or waiting around till 1 side feels safe enough to engage the other side because they have more ships. It is an absolute JOKE. People complaining about the 1.5 BR mechanic because they might get "ganked" in a 2v1 and they can't have their buddies pile out of a port to help them....pathetic. I'd gladly take a 2v1 over this current system of either getting surrounded by 5 guys or this wack a mole port garbage. Before this change I sailed around mostly in smaller ships because 99% of the people would run if it were on equal terms yet everyone with 20 posts is a hard core pvp'er calling out others for being carebears? How about everyone talking smack sail around by their lonesome a bit in the MT, St.Nic, Baracoa triangle in something other than a speed rigged failboat and let me know how it goes....oh and let's all make sure we have our in game names posted so we can matchup forum names.....
Follow me on this. I don't care how your personal enjoyment is effected over mine. You are not the most important person playing this game. No matter how you personally feel the quality of your individual fights are, if a rule change results in loss of 1/3rd of the player population it can start a downward spiral in population effects. Now since you like 1v1.5 you might just be the last one effected by the population drop. Lucky short sighted you. But anyone who signed on this game to play a war simulation is screwed as soon as the population starts dropping. Then they leave and eventually, like in POTBS, your butt will be parked off one port arranging fights with the small player base that's left. If you want to see what that's like then just sign on to POTBS for a week. They are at that stage right now.
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I really like where you're going with this.
I think it should create battle fronts helping solve the "where is the pvp problems". I think it will bring up national unity as well.
My general suggestions...
Tie the votes to clans that own land. This way if one person goes on extended holiday or disappears he can name a guild mate to take over the duties.
The clans votes should further be weighted by member numbers that gave participated in land acquisitions. This would encourage clans to acquire new players and bring them into port battles.
If you make to much emphasis on the actual Lord Protector players will start fighting over who gets to pull flags. A good compromise would be to have the credit goto the clan of the flag puller. Still competition but maybe not as much. It'll also promote clan loyalty over some cross teaming alt with a lot of money gaining a lot of say in an enemy nations politics by just constantly pulling flags.
May want to think of ways to bring the economy game into this. Maybe have rebellions, which you will need to have a mechanic for, be promoted by the rebel faction supplying free goods to the colonists.
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You could just take the land out and goto the build before its addition that didn't have positional entry or BR limits. You can bring the land back when you have the whole package right. It's not like it's so valuable to have land that we need both positional entry issues and 1.5BR rules issues for the sake of it.
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The most confusing thing to me in all this is how and where these ganks are happening. I've played for two months and got ganked twice. That doesn't seem that unreasonable. I sail around most hours I play solo. Yesterday in two hours of sailing I only found x2 pvp fights. Where are these ganks happening? I would love to help counter them. Even sitting off our capital most of the day yesterday I encountered no gankers. Where are these ganks happening? That is where I would like to be playing.
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1.5BR rule would mean gankers need to jump in all at once and cannot use positional reinforcements to surround a faster prey, wouldn't that be right?
Not that we experienced that week we had the 1.5BR with the positional. You could still use the positional to get in front of an enemy even with the 1.5 BR rule.
Example: x2 Renomee and a Constitution chasing a Tricom.
The Renos pursue on the OS. As the first Reno makes the tag the other and the Connie drop out of the circle edge. Now the battle is formed with the first Reno and the Tricom with most likely the Tricom out front at best wind and the Reno far behind it. Battle is now 110BR v 200BR. Meanwhile during the two minute counter the other Reno and the Connie now sail to the other side of the circle. The Niagara now enters. Battle is now 220BR v 200BR. Now the Connie enters. Battle is now 520BR v 200BR with the Connie and Reno in front of the Tricom and a Reno upwind of it. It won't likely escape.
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More than 50% of players like it.....
Prove this to me. I would love to see some hard numbers on this since the player online population nose dived nearly 50% the week we had the 1.5BR limit. Before you make such a wide ranging game change we really need percentages well over 80% or more. A 51% majority or even 65% could still cost us a third of the player population.
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It wasn't working this way. The BR limit was a check on entry but not a check against the BR of the entering ship. So whether we make it 1.5 BR or 1.2 BR you would still see large ships able to enter. As long as the battle was less than or equal to 1.2 BR we can still jump into it with even a Victory or Santissimammake it 1.2 x BR
cause the mechanic still allows for huge ships to imbalance any battle to a much greater degree
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The best part of the French v Pirate war was going out with one or two planked live oak 3rds in the group. We didn't know if we were going to be fighting a few players or a dozen+ but the one thing we knew was there would be no running away. We fought every lopsided battle and we didn't lose all that many. Our single best, in my opinion , was that 6v20 with that group that had two flag carriers in it. Almost all 6 of us sunk but we took BOTH flag carriers down with us. That was hardcore no training wheels pvp right there!I'm with Bach on this. 1v1 battles, arranged fights and hard limits are kinda like "PvP For Beginners". It's been cushioned for casual players, so they don't get hurt too bad.
Hardcore means going out there and risking it all every day. If I sail with 8 people, I might get an 8v1 or I might get a 25v8. What makes hardcore "hardcore" is going out there knowing you're taking a big risk, and keeping your eyes peeled because you know there's no game mechanic standing between you and certain death.
Treaty between Spain and pirates clans
in National news
Posted · Edited by Bach