Bach

I've been the 1 in a few 10v1s. It certainly isn't as much fun when I don't get away. But that said, I understand why 10 players would rather jump into the fight than split up their group. It's not like it's 10 guys just drooling to get a cannon ball into the side of a ship. It's mostly just because they happen to be sailing as a 10 man group befor I came along sailing solo. I don't think it's fair to assume these guys always have some kind of evil intent or planned to be asshats when all 10 of them jump in. It's just part of how the game was coded and it's easier to keep a group together if they just all jump in on me.Yes, I've been ganked. It happens and then I call up the boys and we go get some pay back. That's pvp. I don't need the computer to protect me and prevent 8 out of 10 guys jumping in to gank me. Especially if that rule change is going to prevent me from jumping into their next gank and turning the tables on them.

Sure. I think you are only looking at the situation from the ganker or the gankee positions. That's a bit of an isolated view considering the game as a whole. I'm the guy that wants to get into that battle to rescue the guy being ganked. In a 10v1 I look at this as the potential of getting a dozen guys in to help the 1. A 1v1 in at 1.5 BR restricted system simply means I don't get to jump in to the fight at all. So yes, a 10v1 offers more pvp potential.Have you figured out yet that your not arguing with gankers but with players that prey on the Gankers? Why is this an issue for us? Because if you remove the ability to join existing fights or even those just created then you completely destroy the game for rescue type players. What is the point of playing as a British pirate hunter team, bounty hunter team or zone patrol squadron if you can't actually get into fight you come across? Just put in mechanics that help us get too the gankers and we'll solve this problem for you and enjoy the heck out if it. But limiting battles is just removing parts of the game for us.

exactly "there are just fewer people in them". That's is never a good goal for a pvp game. Same number of pvp fights but available to less of the player base. It's a bad solution that promotes solo play and discourages team play. A better solution would be some mechanic that gets players that want to fight the gankers into that fight. There by having the same number of pvp fights but available to more of the player base. Most of the time we get into a fight there isn't anyone else around for miles. I would imagine if you did this right off a nations Capitol port there would be secondary fights. But in the other 80% of the sea zones they are just going to be sitting there.

True, but this is the effect that then caused everyone to get into the exact same fast OS ships in POTBS. Diversity of ships was the price. The gankers simply responded by all sailing the same light fast ship. Why not? They aren't looking for fair fights anyway. The drawback was that defenders could no longer use overwhelming fire power like rate ships to chase the gankers away from the Capitol. The side effect of the rule is that it forced only certain ship designs to be practical on the open sea. It gives control of who can enter the fights to the ganker team allowing less options to rescue teams. It becomes less practical to attempt rescues or otherwise fight the gankers. After running thus for a few months in POTBS the OS all became light fast Vengy corvettes. Rate ships defending the home port were useless and the gankers could decide whenever they wanted to fight or run so they gained control of the seas. Consider this, your best weapon against gankers and creating pvp at the same time is to find ways to get me and my team into the same fight with the gankers. If you put in ways for players to communicate where the gankers are and ways for us to protect and rescue our nation players. The 1.5 has a better chance of keeping rescuers out of a fight than it has of stopping a gank in the first place.

True, but when faced by a comparable number of 3rd rate Tricoms they end up running from their patrol area and a few get sunk. As fast as the Reno is it doesn't have invulnerable masts and if you get a mass if third rates into the fight the shear number if cannon balls can drop a mast before one escapes. So one by one you start killing the gankers. Since they normally gank at our home ports this then splits them up as the sunk gankers appear over half an hour away. So a mass of thirds can run off the Tricom/Reno gank squad. But if they dance around enough on the OS and only 1.5 BR can fight them then you don't get that mass of third rates into the fight and Tricom/Reno team gets to control the fights. They can stay on station ganking until they manage to take losses. Which probably isn't going to happen until the home team rescuers manage to put together an identical Tricom/Reno rescue team. By restricting the conditions of joining battles the rule puts the control into the hands of the smaller lighter force invading home waters. Not very realistic or even sensible. If they raid your home port they should have to face an overwhelming number of rate ships.

This is true IF this rule change stops at this point. In POTBS it did not. The gankers are gankers by nature. So they will find a way for all 10 players to be in that ring. The people complaining today will still be getting ganked after the gankers adjust. In POTBS this is when the devs started taking the computer forced rules even further. So logically, if the same course holds for NA, a few months from now a patch will just be enforcing the 1.5 BR no matter whose in the ring. This is what a lot if us fear it will come too.

Back then the missions were paying out obscene amounts if gold. It wasn't new players mission running in consitutions and 3rd rates. It was so profitable, before the rule change, everyone was mission running. Again, this was in France home waters AFTER the pirates over ran all the ports but two. The newbie pirates start half way across the map.

Perhaps not. But many of us have already experienced the secondary effects of such BR moderated fights. This is a better game than POTBS but the player natures and the situations are the same. Very seldom do game mechanics ever actually manage to change the people. The gankers will always find a new way to gank. What this new rule will do, as it did in POTBS, is remove my ability to rescue team mates or otherwise turn the tables on the gankers. Limiting the aspects of how we join a battle actually favors the gankers in the long run. I'll give you two examples from Naval Action in the past month. #1 - pirates have over run the French nation in pvp2. We use brigs to invade their mission running and disrupt their Econ. They respond with Tricoms and frigs. They get us into battle with a 3:1 BR advantage. Thus doesn't mean we're all going to get sunk. Most cases we engaged in long distance running fight, strung them out an often sunk one or two before they give up. Just because they out BR us doesn't mean they are ganking us. Those were some of the most exciting battles in NA ever. Under the new rule it's very unlikely they would get a mixed ship group of 3:1 BR in the same battle with us. They will start sailing the same all fast ships like POTBS. You can't string out an unmixed group and it actually becomes more of a gank that players are less likely to escape as the diversity of ships seen in battle decreases. Also, if they don't chose faster ships the 1.5 BR that get into the fights won't sinking and due to the invisible hand of the computer forcing the pirates into 1.5 BR bunches we could actually sink them all one group at a time in a very unrealistic fashion. #2 - 6 of us sail to Jamaica from France to harass the British. It's a patrol. We can't control what we find. It takes an hour to sail there and we need a full load of repair kits to do it. We find a British trader and all get in the battle and sink it. We don't need everyone but it keeps the group together. We catch a victory and a 3rd rate NPC hunting and sink them. The Brits respond with 20 ships and chase us off while sinking some of us. Those sunk on the east side of PR appear in La Isle 30min to east. Those sunk west of PR appear in Cayman Brac 30min west. The survivors are still off PR coast. Our patrol for the night is now done as we're all split up. But it was great fun for the hours we were together and probably great fun for the 20 British that banded together to remove the French. If the new rule was in effect, the patrol group gets divided up sooner and that forces an end to the patrol sooner. It also stops the British overwhelming home port response which they should be allowed to do. If we ship down into faster speed ships we could just hit and run until the British respond in faster ships. In POTBS this new rule slowly forced the whole game into the same two fast ship types for OS play. I apologize if this seems long but we lived thus for 3yrs and saw all the secondary effects. From the point of view of one ship getting ganked by 10 the open Sea strength computer forced fights make a lot of sense. But over time they cause other secondary issues and trends that didn't get noticed until it was to late to back out of.

Because we already tested the heck out of this in POTBS and saw what it did to the various other aspects of the game. It eventually destroyed all non-gladiatorial forms of open sea pvp. With each step in the evolution of anti-gank and seal club rules more and more unforeseen aspects of the combat game died off. Its already been proven.The engine of this game may be different. The graphics may be different. But it's the same people put into the same situations. Let me ask you this. Why do you think this rule is going to make a difference? Those guys complaining today about being ganked by 10 guys 2 min away will be the same guys complaining next month about getting ganked by the same 10 guys that figure out how to be in the circle in smaller faster ships. Then the devs will change the BR rule to effect inside the ring. Then a month after that those same guys will complain about getting ganked by two players at 1.5 BR that attack them in a way they can't escape or get help. No one is learning how to spot, avoid or reverse ganks. It's just constantly restricting the game to stop the complaining. By the by, we have fixed the gank problem in other games. It mostly goes with guilds and other teaching player how to read the signs to see a gank coming and to understand the best ways to get out if them. It's not by the computer doing it for them. If we get to the level of the players working together to avoid or stop ganks you get a healthy pvp game were the players police it themselves. That is how the sand box is supposed to work.

This is what happened in POTBS. We lost the rescuers as well as the gankers. The gankers adjusted to 2 man ganks and the rescuers were screwed. You couldn't jump in to help a cargo ship being attacked by two pirates. It just ends up being you vs. 2 pirates while the cargo ship runs for it. Same thing if the other guys in inexperienced, unprepared or otherwise just runs. So the rescue type players eventually just quit. The gankers adjusted to the new mechanic and used it to advantage.Last night in pvp1 a guy called for help. Pirates were gankng and had him pinned in port. So me and team mate race to help. 30min later, yes it takes a long time to sail in this game, we get on scene just as a pirate frig tags his third rate. We jump in the battle and discover why. The third rate is running missions and is only armed with Coronades. The pirate guesses this and has long guns. The 3rd rate would have been dead meat. But our two brigs get in the fight and it's essentially two brigs vs. a pirate frig as the 3rd rate sails around uselessly in the back ground. Why is this important? Because if that same event occurred with the new rules we would have sailed for 30min only to have the computer prevent us from getting in the battle. Then we either sail home or wait and hour fir the pirate to pick the 3rd rate apart. BR doesn't always determine a battle. A 3rd rate with Coronades may as well be zero BR. Two Snows are only 100 and they can bring down a pirate frig at 180. But regardless, sailing for a wasted hour of my life because the computer won't let me rescue a team mate. That's only going to happen a few times. There is more to this new rule than just ganking effects.

Why do you assume I want ganks. You have taken this tact with me, Vllad and just about any of us who think this rule is bad for the game. You also don't appear to read posts. Tarranis told you we started out NA fighting out numbered and didn't quit. Kinda the opposit of Gankers. Vllad is probably one of the best 1v1 combatants in NA and any rule that forces 1v1 just makes the game easier for him. You make a lot of assumptions about us personal just because of the one view we have. But I don't think your actually listening to any if us.

One could just as easily say that the problem isn't the 6 that prefer to fight the 1. But the 1 for being alone in the first place. The lone player sailing along has no more right to pvp than the 6. He also doesn't have a right to a fair fight in a sand box simply because he chose to sail alone. There is no easy solution. But when you set up the game to side with the solo player you can't be too Suprise when you end up with a primarily solo oriented player base. Again, thus is what happened to POTBS. The team oriented players drifted off into games they could stay together in. POTBS became a soloist elite kind of game.

But even at 1.5BR it still has the problem of leaving bored players outside the battle. All they are learning is what a waste of time chasing pvp in this game can become. You can say they can go fight someone else. But you can't guarantee someone else is even there. What this rule does guarantee is that they have to miss out on some Pvp. Perhaps we can add in a "gems" app they can play while they wait?

I don't know that everyone would switch to fir. But I do think, like POTBS, we're going to start seeing an ocean full of Reno's, Niagaras and fir Trincs. The community will naturally gravitate to whatever ships can escape or control a 1.5BR off set. They did it in POTBS with the Vengy. I would wager they will do it here. When it becomes prevalent enough the rest of use will have to also switch to these boats to have any hope of getting pvp. So kiss your open ocean 3rd rates and Connies goodbye. It won't be all bad but there will be a lot fewer pvp fights as players just start running away from any 1.5 fight they don't want. Which will essentially be any they didn't start. Since there will be less successful pvp there will be less pvp xp. So the importance of level grinding will be higher as a method of gaining xp. Small and large battles might become more popular as will arranged fights as a way of being able to fight in slower ships. We'll all be hanging at la tortue near Mortimer town arranging fights to get 6v6 pvp. At that point we will have become POTBS II

Again, we saw this in POTBS. What happened is players learned that fast OS ship that could fight 1v1 could control most all the fights since there was no longer gross offsets. So everyone started sailing the Vengy. It was fast enough on the OS to control tags, it could 1v1 almost anything and run from any 2v1 fight it didn't want to. The same will probably happen here. Players will learn to gravitate to ships that are fast on the OS to out run anything that can out gun them and outgun anything that might catch them. Once the community figures out what that ship is it will be all we start seeing patrolling the OS. The thing with gank odds is that the Vengy doesn't always get away when x6 HMCs start out shooting at its sails. But it almost always controls the fight when it was only x1 HMC. So the rule doesn't create better fights so much as it starts to restrict and program how that are always fought. And if every fight you get into is a 6v1 its time to start thinking the problem might be in the mirror. Seriously though, if that's happening to you and you want some help or advice on how to avoid it contact me in game. I'll always help you.

That's not what happened in POTBS it's not what will happen here. 2v1 is just as much of a gank as 6v1s. In POTBS the OS Str rules just replacesd 6v1 ganks with 2v1s. Ganks didn't go away. Fights didn't become half way decent or any better. People just got bored and slowly quit playing. The one that got ganked and left parted with strongly worded nasty grams to the devs. The ones that got bored just faded off. I still maintain, one pissed off player is better than three bored ones.

I'm not sure if we're playing on the same serve but it's not that crowded out there. I sailed for 45min yesterday and only saw two players and one of them was on my team. Missing one battle when you only get one opportunity every hour is a big deal.

Don't be silly. There are no gankers. It's not like 6 guys get together and say "hey lets go sail around till we can find some lone guy to best up on and we'll just run away from everyone else". That's not happening. Players group up, pick there ships and then go sail for an hour to enemy shores. It's not like they can control if it's one enemy player that comes along or twenty. It's just random chance for the most part. You can expect these guys that sailed for an hour, only to cone across a lone frigate, to sit there and draw straws for who finally gets to pvp. It's just silly. So they all jump in and if they catch the frigate they all get xp and gold. If 5 of them sit outside waiting for a battle then they get no pvp and no gold for two hours effort in game. Thats just silly. There are no cowardly gankers. It's generally just layers that happen across one guy traveling solo. It's not their fault or even under their control. It also cheapens the game. It's not like a British squadron of frigates, in real life, would have let a Spanish galleon go or draw straws for who gets to fight it. It's supposed to be a war and a lone unescorted cargo ship or patrol vessel is supposed to be taking a risk.

POTBS tested this for years. I'm not sure how you think we're likely to reach different results for doing the same thing. But sure, have at it. The three players sitting outside probably didn't joint the game solo. They probably joined their clan to sail together as a team. In POTBS this rule broke up teams and it will do the same thing here. Battles in NA can take an hour. If those second three do go get in another battle then they may miss the others coming out of theirs. Etc.. Etc.. POTBS examples for years. You just end up splitting up teams for the sake of one lone guy that's most likely still getting sunk by the 1.5 BR anyway. One pissed off player is better than x3 bored ones.

The new patch is set to restrict Open World encounters to a 1.5-1 BR ratio for any ship not in the original tag circle. This is a very POTBS destroying concept. More pvp players quit that game over forced "anti- gank" programming that I knew in 6 years playing than any other feature. It's got nothing to do with people "wanting" to gank other people. In the end it simply comes down to play time. Example: A group of 6 players sails for half an hour to get to an open world patrol site. Along comes a single target after 15 min on station. The target starts running and gets tagged by a tackler. The slower bigger ships are outside the tag ring. The computer program now enforces the 1.5 BR rule and denies the three remaining group members from getting into the action. So now those three players have to sit there on the OS most likely doing nothing for what in NA can be an hour long battle. So now they invested almost two hours into the game and get no action. This is what was happening in POTBS. Players would form up and sail the sand box only to have the computer split them up or deny them from actions based on trying to make all battles fair. In the end, players will look at this situation as a huge waste of their time. It's not there fault that in a sand box only one target comes along. They can't plan on that or control it but the computer moderated "anti-gank" function will still punish you for it. The ironic part, nine times out of ten the lone player is still going to get sunk by the 1.5 BR anyway. He is just going to be slightly happier he got sunk by less guys. Meanwhile you got x3 players forced into doing nothing for an hour by the computer that are only going to put up with that a finite number of times. Getting ganked may suck. But it's still better than being forced to sit on the ocean doing nothing for an hour. Remove the anti-gank computer moderations. It's just going to backfire on NA. It's simply a game that takes longer to travel to patrol points and has even longer battles to wait on than POTBS. The hardest thing you may ever have to do as Devs is turn a deaf ear to gank complainers. But it is simply the better move.

All this hub but over relatively nothing. In a month or two there will be a reset. At that time you will lose you gold, bps and ships. If you move to pvp1 from pvp2 today your going to lose the exact same stuff. It's just stuff and your going on have to learn how to rebuild quickly again anyway. If you want to make the move but are worried about gear then here is what I would suggest. Contact a clan already in pvp1 in the nation you want to join. Get then to give your transferring clan 3-4 captured third rates. From there those 3-4 capped third should put your entire clan on the path to rebuilding in short order if you work together. If your a solo player switching to pvp1 leaving Victories, several Pavels and maximum outposts behind...well then your screwed. But entire clans that move will rebuild fast with minimal help from those already in pvp1.

Good point. The last few nights we've been sailing to where the pvp is only to read "Britain has a conquest flag for x French port". That port is now an hour or more sail away and there is no way to even get to it. With the low population, since various French are stuck at sea the remaining few aren't enough for port defense so they don't attend. The end result is unintended PvT. I'm not sure how we would fix this. As long as the OS pvp isn't in the same area as the port conquest defending is impractical unless for those two hours you simply camp that port hoping it gets attacked. Further, that only works if you are a small nation. I can't imagine how Britain or the USA would hope to protect ports. I think they would be forced into just letting them fall as wel. Perhaps players need a teleport to port for defense button or something. I don't know. But without equally matched populations defending proportionally sized territories I don't see how port defense is all that likely.

I think as we go through this alpha we are uncovering a number of things that are worth discussing and thinking about. When France was defensively fighting on its door step the pvp was fast, furious and required very little organization. We little rally stepped out of port into pvp. The pirates had moved in and we're trying to live in the same ports so it was probabl the same for them. Today we're stretched across the map. Britain is also stretched across the map. The result is we each often probably find ourselves sailing for 39-45 min to find pvp. Once there, if you happen to be in the wrong ship it's to late to change. Repairs are based off kits and not port repairs so time on station pvp is limited by repair kits. Though 27 kits does seem to be a good number. A further problem is that when you die you don't get to pick what port you reappear in. So if your stuff is in La Tortue but on death you reappear in Ile la Viche then you are still stuck and can't change anything. It also makes pvp in 1dura ships problematic. A death on the wrong side of a longitude or latitude line can end up taking you out of pvp for the rest of the night. So one of the things I think we've learned is that it would probably be better if players could choose where they reappear on a death.

To WIN! Seriously though, I doubt it's a British player thing. No one thinks in terms of what makes the game fun for everyone. They are only thinking in terms of how they can keep that port without having to camp out way way over there by it when they don't want too. It's just one of those human nature things you can't beat. My suggestion, all ports should revert back to the original owners following three days of inactivity by the conquerors. Then the only front worth guarding are the active fronts. Players would lose the "take all the ports I can" mentality and shift to "take only the ports I need to use and use them to get somewhere". What ever, but when player take more ports than they are planning to use we also end up with ports they never intend to defend. So they move the timers to hours they hope the enemy won't be able to attack them in as th only defense.

Perhaps, but not in numbers of hundreds and not in three days time each.