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Killick

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Posts posted by Killick

  1. I'm not sure if I can add anything useful to this discussion, but perhaps it's interesting to hear the opinion of someone from a different category. I do not belong to the group of players who has dropped this game and neither to the group of players who is still playing it. I belong to the vast group of people who has never bought the game and never played it. I only know it from YouTube movies and forum discussions like this one. In short, I'm one of the many customers that GL never had.

    I have been following the development of NA for years and I have been hoping for it to become the game that I always imagined: a beautiful and immersive simulator of the age-of-sail era that would allow me to feel the thrill of seeing a single sail at the horizon after a long time of sailing and then chasing it in the hope of forcing an encounter – or being chased and trying to outrun the other. Basically what I want is an age-of-sail version of Silent Hunter: single player, realistic ship handling, challenging weather conditions, one giant map, no instances, time compression and – very importantly –  first person view from deck. I have voiced these thoughts several times in the past on the forum.

    But with every decision from the devs I have seen in the past years, my hopes of that game ever emerging out of NA have diminished. The chance that I will ever buy the game now is very small. Yet, I occasionally check the forums to see if there are some people that are of the same opinion as me. I am glad to see in this topic that there are.

    • Like 5
  2. On 9/27/2017 at 5:04 PM, admin said:

    the view from deck and balconies during combat would be awesome and will be done in one of the future games (in single player). In the current game deck view is possible but requires tweaking the camera (using home) but only works from the fixed position but still provides some screen shot and video making options.

    I am very glad to read this. In fact, the inability to control the ship from the deck is one of the things that is currently keeping me from buying this beautiful game. I look at all the YouTube videos and I just get tired of all the jumping in and out of the ship. Watching the ships from above makes them look like small digital toy boats, which in my opinion is a shame because they are so carefully and beautifully modeled in great detail from nearby. Perhaps I'm just getting old, I don't know. Anyhow, reading this thread gives me the impression that I'm not the only one who would find this important. Some people even reported that the current camera system makes them feel nauseous, which I could imagine.

    Would it be possible to give a tiny bit more info on the plans for the 'future single player game' mentioned above? Of course, I understand no promises can be made. But any info would be greatly appreciated.

  3. Why are the devs not responding to this request? It would be so simple to implement and there is clearly a high demand for it. Rather than continuing to add more content to the game, they should spend a little time on these immersive issues.

    Personally, I haven't bought this game yet and I do not plan to do so until it seems like I can enjoy it from a first-person perspective on deck (and not in helicopter view or at best ten feet above deck). Every time I see the YouTube movies, I am disappointed of the viewpoints.

    • Like 1
  4. I'm so glad someone is bringing this up. The view from the deck is hugely more immersive than all those helicopter views I see on the YouTube movies all the time. I really don't understand why deck view isn't just the default. You get a much better sense of scale and perspective, and the ships are made with such care for detail. But with those ultrafast drone camera's flying circles around the ship, even the Victory looks like a toy boat. And sure, you get a little less strategic overview when looking from deck, but isn't that just realism?

     

    I have the feeling that this game has enormous potential to re-enact the age-of-sail feeling, but that it is being wasted by making it just another top-view RTS game. Please devs, think about ways to implement deck view or, even better, walking over the decks. And I'm not talking about creating avatars, just camera positioning and movement.

    • Like 1
  5. Well, I've said it before but I'm happy to repeat it here again: for those who really like realism and immersion (like myself) it would be fantastic to make the camera moveable across the deck. As if you are walking the ship. Yes, it would take you a few seconds to be able to look forward when you happen to be standing aft, but so it was in real life. In addition I vote for limiting external view to non-combat situations only (on dedicated realism servers).

     

    Please note that all this does NOT require avatars to be made. I don't need to see myself nor any other captain, I'm just talking about being able to move the camera at walking speed. This should be relatively easy to implement and adds a world of immersion. I want to have the feeling that I am ON a ship, rather than that I AM a ship. 

    • Like 3
  6. I agree with the notion that creating avatars is a waste of resources, and that adding avatar combat would destroy the game.

     

    The only thing that I would really, really like - I've said this before elsewhere - is the possibility to walk around my ship in first person. Perhaps not inside the ship, but at least on the decks. This does NOT require any avatar to be made, because I won't be seeing myself. But I think it would add a lot to the immersion at hardly any additional costs in terms of resources (seeing that the ships are already modeled beautifully).

     

    EDIT: Let me clarify this a little more. If one can only move the ship, it is as if the player 'is' the ship, rather than its captain. By allowing the possibility to move independently on the ship it will feel much more like you are just a person riding on top of that giant ship. I believe it will make the game feel much grander.

    • Like 1
  7. This is just brilliant: you guys have a lot of great ideas. I hope ships will also be known by their name, not just their owner's name, so that even when it changes owner it can still be feared for its qualities.

     

    (Edit: still haven't figures out how to properly quote on this forum, but I meant this post in reply to the unique stats post of admin.)

  8. he had to do alot of research to find answers to these questions:

     

    is the side cabins that you can see on the sides of sterns walkable or just dekoration

     

    is the midle window of the cabin with an uneven number of windows real or just dekoration because the rudershaft goes up there.

    just to make sure you know what i mean on this one i show you an example:

    HMB Endeavour 1768 of james cook

     

    Sorry, but these are ridiculous reasons for not making the ships walkable. Of course not every closet needs to be walkable and I also don't foresee having to use the in-game privy much, but at least the upper decks can be made walkable, right? Just the big flat parts: not every corner inch has to be defined. How hard can it be?

     

    I also really don't see how performance will be affected by players moving their camera along the deck of their ship. Whether or not there will be an actual captain-avatar moving along with the camera is up for debate, but personally I wouldn't even care about that. Just give me the impression that I can walk my ship by letting me move my first person camera across the decks.

  9. Current thinking is to provide semi-accurate maps for players for the known areas, but uncharted waters will be more ... uncharted, providing the sense of unknown and the feeling of getting lost.

     

    Do I understand correctly that the game will not in any way tell me where I am? So I have to completely figure it out based on visual sightings and dead reckoning: that is really great! Will the ships experience leeway? In that case you could end up quite off from your destination after crossing a large body of water.

     

    I have to get used a bit to the fact that there will be instanced battles, but I suppose it has to be like that in this type of multiplayer game. Hopefully the battle map will be a good representation of the location on the real map (no random islands like in POTBS). The transition should be as smooth as possible. Also, the relative positioning of the ships at the beginning of a battle should be based on the real-map situation. 

  10. Just to respond to the Admin's argument that people will hate wind scale because you can only log off when in port: is that necessarily true? Why can't there be a system where people can log off in open sea, provided that they haven't been in visual contact with an enemy ship for a certain number of minutes? Of course people could 'misuse' this feature by temporarily logging off to evade enemies or bad weather conditions, but in practice, when you are mid-game, nobody wants to step out and do nothing for 30 minutes just to 'cheat'. I think such a system could work just fine without having to remove the effect of wind scale.

    • Like 2
  11.  

    I'm not going to get into the ranking idea, but the idea of walking about on your ship is a good one.

    The issue is more related to the technical feasibility of it.

     

    The devs have no concrete plans to implement player avatars, and if they do implement them, it will be pretty far along in the development process.

    Player avatars will likely require a fair bit of additional development time, especially if they are in any way involved in combat.

     

    The things they would need to work on include, but are not limited to,

    • Both Male and Female Character Models
    • Clothing Options (for both genders)
    • Hairstyles (for both genders)
    • other 3D models (Buildings, Trees, Civilians, Clutter, etc...)
    • Explorable Game environments using these 3D models (multiple Towns (with interiors?), a ship's cabin. (for many types of vessel?)
    • Overhauls to object collision to accommodate freedom of movement aboard your vessel. (or you might just fall through the ship, and out of the game world.)

     

    Except for the last item in the list, I don't see why all this would be necessary in order to be able to walk on the decks. We are just talking about the possibility to move the camera with the 'adsw' keys at walking speed and maybe add some footstep sounds. This simple option would add a wealth of immersion. Imagine running to the forecastle in order to get a better view at a sail ahead on the horizon. Or walking to the back of the ship to inspect the mizzen staysail. As long as you don't put any mirrors on deck, the player wouldn't need to look at himself, right?

     

    I agree that modelling ship interior and especially town environments should have much lower priority though.

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