Bach

If it was then they never showed up when we took the ports the first time.

Granted this was the case. However to be fair, the attackers don't necessarily know we can't get anyone into that area. Besides we are the team that set the timers to a time when we were not there either. Now the pvp2 Brits may be guilty of purposely setting timers, after the battle, to odd hours. However, I think the game mechanics need some tweaking as there will always be more territory than can be practically defended with 4hr teleport timers. Though to be honest I am not sure what that would be. Even with a 1 hour advanced warning we wouldn't have been able to sail to the ports under attack and even so what fun would that have been?

The easiest solution is to just remove the rate ships from the player build able ships. Make them rare and only granted by the king or gov for a merit award. The standard port battle ship should be a frigate or 4th rate. SOB was sailing around with more rate ships themselves than the historical Carribean ever saw. Game masters simply can not expect players to limit themselves. Many, from the first day they started playing, put them selves on a grinding treadmill to the top and they weren't going to stop till they got there.

First off, I believe we should all be playing on one huge server. I think it's going to happen. That said, your fooling yourself if you think the problem in finding fights is based on the server. It's based on the players. Right now your enjoying a lot of action on PVP1 because the Brits there were on the defensive. This means the enemy is on your door step and you can literally step out if port and pvp. That's how the game is for the defender. Since the migration from PVP2 has suddenly popped up the Brit population you should enjoy success on pvp1 as you now suddenly out number what your opponents were prepared for. As time goes by you will begin to push out from the home ports and begin having to sail a lot to pvp. This will be especially true if you continue to use the home ports regularly. If you successful enough you will become dominant and own red dots as far as you can sail in a day. At that point YOU will have transformed pvp1 into the same thing YOU had transformed pvp2 into for yourselves. It really comes down to what the players choose to do with the environment handed to them. If you want fights on pvp2 or even future pvp1 you have to adjust your play style. Don't take every single port you can. Why? Simple, it does two things. It forces Brits who use the home area to have to sail further to play. Second it just fills the game with more empty PvT battles as no one has the time or set up to defend all that crap all over the place. Don't be afraid to "spear" your way into enemy territory by island hopping and holding just 1-2 ports in your enemies back yard. Now you only need to be in two locations to find pvp. The closer the spear head gets to the enemy capital or NPC hunting grounds the more pvp you will find. It's taking all the ports creating these huge undefendable fronts that make the game boring or stagnant. So what if you enemy owns a port right next to your home port? Now you don't have to sail all day to find each other.

I think the servers will merge eventually. They need to get more in line with EVE. Players are going to get into bad situations, boring situations and others. They need to be able to move and find or do new things. However, switching servers is not a great way to do that. What is better is having more game area they can move into and still some day rotate back with all their assets and such in tact. Let's say pvp 1 server was the Carribean, pvp 2 server in the combine North and Baltic seas, pvp 3 the Mediteranian. You get the idea. If established players the the Carribean become unhappy with the lay of that land they simply move to a fresh sea zone and continue playing. They just sail past Bermuda to a gate like region of the ocean and appear west of Ireland. Maybe the Spanish build up in the Mediteranian while recovering from Carribean loses. Maybe the bored British wage a new war in the Baltic. But they can always return and keep their assets. Better yet there is no magic shifting of powers over night. Players actually move and can be seen moving and appearing. If the Pirates on pvp1 are waging a good balanced war on the British does it really make sense that in one day there can suddenly be twice as many British popping out of thin air? Wouldn't it be better if those migrating British came from somewhere in the same play area like the North Sea zone. This is turn frees up the North Sea zone for Spanish to rebuild etc... It's healthier and more dynamic than server swaps.

Glad to see British players finally coming around. Now if only the Americans would too.I think a lot of it was the "POTBS" mentality coming into NA. In POTBS you won a map by taking the most ports. In NA all that does is paint dots in the Carribean. One could argue eliminating all of one type of enemy port makes you "safer" but that just an illusion. All it really does is stop them from repainting the same useless dots you just painted. Enemies can continue raiding and blockading your ports from the Free Cities that they were probably already basing out of anyway. So in the end neither of you is PB pvping and your the one that got stuck spending all the gold for it. I'm not sure how we will ever beat that type of thinking. The real win is in only taking the ports you need and in leaving enough open corridors so would be enemy nations can still reach and fight each other. No offense intended but the following are the three dumbest strategic moves I have seen so far in this game: #1 - Britain taking the entire center of the map there by setting themselves up to be fought on all sides. #2 - USA stomping the pirates out of the Bahamas, Spain from Cuba and then the French out of the Gulf thereby sealing themselves into boredom that was destined to lose players. #3 - Absolutely no nations willing to take a chance on diplomacy and leaving any other nation a flag anywhere near there home areas. Paranoia is the only winner there. I'm talking about the Brits taking all of French Haiti and the French refusing to leave pirate ports or the lone WIS port.

The developers have been hinting to a formal political system which should help things quite a bit.

I was there at St. John. The WIS were hopelessly outnumbered but gave it a valiant effort. The battle went to the end and there were still WIS fighting as the last tower fell before everyone began to punch out. Same thing happened at Cabo Roya when it was just three WIS. Couple things we will never be able to get around. There will never be a perfect setting for port timers. The paranoid defensive nature of humans is simply never going to allow even one conditional enemy port in the backfield. No matter how much fun that could be. You just can't sell the idea past the masses. No some things we can eventually get around. Eventually port battle terrain will change things up. Perhaps we'll see medium depth ports to give frigates more relavance and increased numbers of shallow ports. Alliance tools that resolve some of the human nature trust issues. Some strategic goals or reasons to fight other than coloring the map. This and more is still possible. It's a really good skeleton of a game with huge potential.

For the love of gawd anything but a boring March across Haiti please. It's time for you Brits to offer up a path so we can go somewhere, see and do something new. If I were you, just saying, I would offer to give up ports that put the French on some front you'd rather not have to deal with.

It looks like the only big problem it the location of the Capitol isn't great for smaller Spain membership. The Americans can only go south. The Brits have more Options but are also very close. I think it would be better and more interesting if the Spanish Capitol were moved to Mexico. It would add more value to the Gulf and separation from the heavy action for new Spanish players.As it stands now, unless Spain happens to be one of the more populated nations it's always going to face brutal odds near its Capitol.

I have often wonder if they could adapt a similar method for future expansion. Say we sail through an area of sea thar represents a gate and poof we come out in the north and Baltic Sea zones or the Mediterranean or Indian oceans. It would allow for some really wild expansion potential. If you think about it, all EVE ever offered us were ports, resources and vast areas of space to fight in. The two games in concept are very similar. So why not gates to the rest of the worlds oceans eventually. However, I think we should all be one big server in that event. No need for pvp1,2 etc...

I'll give you this one. It's possible. I hit Captain de Pavlion last night (French third rate captain) after sinking a British player Belle Poule off St. John. That is nearly all pvp xp and really didn't include many port battles. I don't think because your British that you haven't fought many defensive PBs. To be honest I hadn't thought that much about it but as you mention it it does seem logical. Now I'm admitting you have a point. But I still think I could run a battle line that could still gun down the towers on a long range pass with hvy ships. We should test it sometime and you could show me what that defensive set up would look like. Is there a test sever or we could just jump to another server as the same nation.

I don't doubt it but the sea fight seems a better option. Granted the sea fight is all I normally do and I haven't actually dealt with that many towers. So it may just be a case of going with what I am used too.

Easier said than done. Protecting a tower from drive byes from heavy rate ships is much more difficult than just fighting them at sea. Consider the cannons can always just hit the top of the tower that sticks up above any blocking ships.

deleted. Double posted

I think your assuming to much. At that phase of the battle the defenders still thought they were going to get their victory and the other 3rds into the fight. They were calling off the frigates outside not to jump in. Assuming they had this BR coming the towers were irrelevant and sending ships directly to them would have been a bad move as it cost BR that would be needed at the end fight. Now if they had realized from the start that the additional high BR ships were never coming then yes I totally agree with you.So to tie this back to topic about the BR mechanic. Why did the battle close before the defending force of ships was beaten down = BR mechanic of 2:1 stopped the fights Why did French hold off getting all frigates into the fight as soon as it started = BR mechanic Why did French stay off tower defense = BR mechanic favors the sea battle but only if the defender starts that phase at max BR so it deters using the BR early to defend towers if a sea battle is the plan. If the BR mechanic was 3:1 the entire French strategy would have likely shifted. The British would have decimated the French fleet. The French would have scored a few kills and none of us would be talking about this.

How many times does everyone in this thread have to say this to you? The issue is that the defenders in the battle were NOT ALLOWED to fight the attackers. Those guys weren't talking about running around on some 1.5 hour stall that DOESNT EVEN WORK since the battle ring now shrinks to prevent it. This is ALL about the BR MECHANIC stopping a fight when defending players wanted to continue. Which would have allowed the heavier attacking force the potential fun and xp from sinking them. It didn't save anyone from griefing as no one was trying to grief. You were in the battle like 15 min. That's like the opposite of being griefed. My belief is that the 2:1 BR mechanic worked well at the frigate level. But now that we're in the transition where some players are getting into heavy BR ships while others cannot yet that the old 3:1 ratio may make more sense. For the time being and until the port terrain changes come out that would probably be enough to keep everyone happy. As to needing content beyond RVR. I happen to think you are correct. Others in this thread believe other things are driving people out. Who is to say which is true? Without the data it's just players saying what they think it might be. It's not a personal attack so much as all us of just feeling strongly about a game we like.

Everyone who could get into that fight and wanted too did. The Victory captain had just gone AFK before you pulled the battle flag. He did not make it into the battle in a frigate. On TS they were doing everything they could down to trying to get his home phone number to get him into the fight. The NPC hunting group he was in also had some 3rd rates that went AFK at the same time. That sort of thing is going to happen unless you would like to start scheduling battle times with your enemies. To be fair I believe there was on captain that bailed out of the battle once they were all talking suicide fight on TS. Again, that's going to happen. We don't control it and neither do you.Why did no one stay after the battle for an OW fight? Because after the computer denied them doing it in the PB morale was gone. Many just sailed home and logged. However last night at St. John we gathered a force to meet the British after the PB and its reinforcements. The British scouted us and all teleported home to avoid that fight. So don't try to come off like your always looking for an OW battle either. Ok I got a question on the Swedish Peace Treaty. Which I think is an admirable way to resolve this since they broke up as a nation. Last night the Swedes called looking for help. The said WIS had done a "Pearl Harbor" on them an attacked the port of St. John's during those negotiations to try to blind side the few Swedes left. Is there any truth to that? My apologies to Arsilon as we are clearly off topic.

I don't believe Arbour meant it the way you took it. No one is looking for forced fair fights. I don't ever want to play a pvp game that does that. This is about no fights. I hate to bring up the Fred's battle again because the emotion flying around that one isn't good. But it was the best example of the "no fights" game mechanic I can think of. I didn't make it to the battle. I was in route at the time listening on TS. The battle ended very quickly and was over before I got to it. However I heard it on TS. The British brought very large ships and average BR of 450 per player. The French got 18 or so into the battle in a reasonable amount of time to do something but not enough to stop it. The British were just hitting the towers while the French were hitting the British ships. The French chose to fight to the death even if they were losing the port in hopes of sinking the British Victory and some Pavels I think. This was the French plan and they were doing it as reported earlier a number of British ships were close to sinking. However, the French were denied this suicide battle of glory as the computer simply ended the fight based on BR before any of the ships had time to sink. This game mechanic prevented pvp that the players were more than willing to do. I think the question is "What is the intent of the 2:1 BR victory condition?" Was that intent to allow a massively larger force not to have to fight a 2:.8 BR force that wanted to fight it? I'm guessing probably not. It also opens the door for a potential tactic of "PvT over pvp" by allowing an adversary to tailor a 25 man PB group that only needs to fight towers to win PB's. Now none of this says leveling is a bad thing and no one is saying opponents shouldn't be able to bring everything they can to a PB. But perhaps the computer shouldn't be ending fights at 2:1 BR. Maybe it needs to go back to 3:1 now that players are starting to get into 1st and 2nd rates. To me that is the thing. We all talk about how there should be risk to bringing out a 1st rate. But that risk isn't really there if the computer ends the fight before a reasonable force has a chance to inflict that loss. Basically, the smaller force should be allowed to fight on to inflict losses to prevent a key ship like a 1st rate dura from getting into the next PB. Suicidng a 3rd rate to remove a 1st rate is still a tactic worthy of Lord Nelson.

My suggestions for fixing this were in my first post. The biggest of which I think is to simply increase the number of shallow ports to add more RVR potential for new players that come along. We can't very well tell them "sorry but you just can't come to port battles until you can sail a third rate". Some players will never have that kind of time to invest. But if we had more shallows it would help. Also the rank spread from Tricom to Third rate is a huge BR jump. It also kind makes the Connie somewhat useless. This bracket could use another captains rank in the middle to make the Connie relevant. We could also create a medium rank ports that center on this weight class for when players are centered on this level. Then we can still maintain the deep Dee waters for the big boys. I think this would eleviate the need for an arms race which in turn eleviate the need for the grind by players that prefer not to or otherwise can't.

Dude, you got to read the stuff your writing. Your still hung up on a battle. Wer'e all talking about the NPC grind requirement of that arms race. You keep pushing the grind as a good thing. What do you do for a living? Are you married? Do you have any kids? Are you so addicted to this that you don't think any of that matters? For the health of the game and it's players it matters. It really does.

No one was out gunned but the towers. The ship to ship guns actually had nothing to do with the battle. I'm not complaining, I'm just telling it how I saw it. You are getting overly defensive and not looking at this for what it is. Step out of the British shoes and out of the French shoes. Your a new player joining the game listening to the battle. You hear the ship configuration used. You hear there was no actual ship to ship fighting that mattered. The computer simply ended the fight do to some numbers ratio. You then realize you have to get into one of those types of ships to compete. How long will this take you? Won't these guys be in even bigger ships by then? When will I be allowed into port battles? Is this game worth the time input?These are all questions that went through my mind. I can't sail a third rate yet. Do I want to grind that many NPC? Logically next month this is going to escalate into Victories. Do I want to grind that many NPCs? For me that answer is no. I'm probably not going to be the only one. The game will hemorage players because this particular style of RVR combat only favors a few and is a huge deterant to new comers.

Yes they did. I am not blaming you. It's an arms race. OMG are working towards the same thing and even the Swedes. Everyone will eventually have to do this on every pvp server. Even on the OS the only ships we would see now are third rates and Trincomelees. I suspect that is mostly because the Tricoms can chase or it would just be all third rates.If I seem angry I am angry at the game. I had such high hopes for it. We're only one month in and the pixel carribean is already filled with more third rates that the real world ever saw. Next month it's going to be Victory's. That's a PVE grind I'm just not willing to do. At the brig and frig level the game is awesome. At the rate ship level it's a second PVE job. Just picture what new players joining the game next month would see ahead of them to RVR. Most of them will just turn away. That grind is not healthy for the game or even in real life. My suggestion, new players need to be RVR viable in their second week of game play. Currently we're drifting far far away from this. I think the ratio of shallow ports to deep should much higher to increase the relevance of shallow ports to give new players more opportunity. Rate ships should somehow be more rare and likely not achievable through NPC grinding. Maybe some kind of award from the government for pvp service or something. But they need to be more rare or they simply dominate the arms race and it becomes a necessity to RVR. Probably should also be another captains rank between Tricom and 3rd rate. That BR jump is just to huge and seems to make the Connie somewhat useless. On a side note you said "French are to lazy to grind up to the ships they need". You call not doing that grind lazy. I call it not getting a divorce and losing the house and kids. Please pull your head out of your butt before you go saying things like that.

No man, Slamz is right. I was almost there at that battle and listened to all the short length of it. That battle was over so fast many of us couldn't even sail to it from Visquez. As soon as the towers went down the >2-1 starting BR instantly ended the fight. You knew it was going to go that way and its why you set it up as such. It guaranteed a win without a fight and is the epitomy of zerging. If that is what you want you got it. I am not going grind NPC's until my eyes bleed to play that game. Take all the ports you want they are yours for the taking with no actual game play to be had by anyone. What your doing is not PVP and didn't require any skills beyond math.

Exacly and I have seen the same over the past 20 years. You either build a game to pvp or you build a game to PVE. The best you can hope for is to offer one server for each crowd and hope they stick too it. The cross over players tend to herald in a games destruction more so than pvp or PVE players.Cross overs are the restriction PVPrs that don't fit into pvp or PVE. I tend to call them gladiators. These are the guys that think every pvp fight should be fair. If it's not fair they start whining up a storm in the forums insisting on restrictions placed into pvp so they don't get ganked on open world pvp. Far worse than PVE players. Give a PVE player his own server and he is happy. The gladiators always feel they MUST change the pvp open world to fit their arena fight style version of pvp elitism. The funny part is that they are really limited PVPrs. I first came across this concept in Ultima online. This pvp elite ace in my guild was supposed to be training me. Inside the confines of a tower walls he had no equal one on one. So we go out into the dungeons to "patrol". We come across a guy harvesting ore from an enemy guild. He quickly kills him. Then we go into a dungeon where we get ambushed by a player who kills us both. Coming out of that we walk into 4 players that kill us.So then later in another dungeon where we meet up with four more of our guild. We go hunting the guy that ambushed us and find him in another dungeon. He uses the terrain to divide us, drags us through mobs that agro on us and ends up killing all 6 of us by himself. So my guild elite pvp ace begins complaining constantly that the game is broken. You either always get jumped by greater numbers, the mobs agro to easy or whatever else to explain his overland pvp losses. He would be perfectly happy if every battle took place 1v1 in the confines of the tower walls. So I quit the guild and he asks me why. I tell him it's because he is a gladiator and I want to be a soldier. So I go find that guy that ambushed us and ask him to teach me to pvp no matter the terrain, the numbers or the weapons. Best move I ever made in gaming.