StaleMemes

Yep my university is all but closed, everyone sent home for spring break + two weeks, all classes online, it sucks. I'm in calc II and Physics, which are classes I'd really rather not take online but hey, at least there aren't many cases in my area (yet).

Well, seeing as this discussion is going around again I might as well post this: Old topic is a bit outdated now but some of the ideas I believe would be good as a complement to or replacement of existing hostility mechanics. Edit and raids have been added since the topic was created.

I have a couple, some are crazy. 1. Pirate nation. I think pirates are currently a huge lost opportunity for a fun, less time intensive, exciting playstyle. With pirate nation, theres no reason to really have pirates at all because they are just another nation which is unrealistic. Lots of suggestions have been put forth to change pirates, but they usually get shot down by players who currently play pirates that don't want to lose their nation. This shouldn't be allowed to stop progress and working on underdeveloped areas of the game. Make piracy the rough, dangerous, (and often short) outlaw life running from the navy and raiding the weak, and I will never play for a conventional nation again. I've been waiting to play as a pirate since the combat test module, hopefully it will happen one day. 2. Boarding. I don't like the rock paper scissors boarding and I don't like the binary way it works. Ships going from full sails to lashed and completely unable to move or do anything except board, while also able to do no boarding actions like shooting muskets while moving is odd. It might work from a PVP perspective, but I don't find it fun or realistic. 3. Multiplayer. Hear me out. Ok not really feature I'd want to see changed in naval action, but I think that naval action would have been a much better game as a single player OW experience with co op perhaps. This game has been in development for a long time and it is dragged down into mediocrity by the efforts to balance multiplayer PVP. Countless cool features had to be abandoned because players would abuse them, and countless horrible ones introduced to quell player abuses. Every time I think of a cool mechanic to suggest, I have to abandon the thought because it would be exploitable with alts or by large groups of unscrupulous players. I would much rather a naval action where all the time spent on the impossible task of balancing things is instead spent on game mechanics that add depth, realism, or just fun. Again, its not something I would want to change about naval action, its something I'd like to see in a different title or would have liked to have seen from the start. I respect the decisions the devs have made as its clear naval action was never meant to be the ideal game for me.

Damn I forgot about that one. I remember being disappointed in the 1 teleport per day feature, little did I know...

Here's what I think. Players should have limited information about each of their own masts, perhaps a dots or squares on the damage model with white squares meaning minimal damage, yellow moderate damage, and red critical damage. Example undamaged: Example heavily damaged main mast.: Then have mast failure based off of a combination of mast health, rig/sail health, and the force exerted on the masts from sails. For instance, each time a mast takes a hit from a cannonball, there is a random chance the mast falls based on the above factors. At minimal mast and rig damage and full sails the chance would be zero, with moderate damage and less sails set the chance would also be zero . When masts start getting hit while lots of sails are set or they are already very heavily damaged, then the likelihood of demasting would be become significant. Heavily damaged masts with weakened rigging support taking fire from large cannonballs while under full sails stress would topple quickly. This would give meaning to sail settings that are currently almost never changed in battle: Any captain worth their salt will handle yards and de-power jibs instead of raising sails in 99% of situations currently. With this suggested mechanic there would be a risk and a reward to doing so, extra agility and speed at the risk of losing a mast to an sudden well aimed broadside. It would also make "mast sniping" less effective because once a player sees that they are being sniped they can lower sails to battle sails where the requirements to actually down a mast would be extremely high.

Give the option for consensual duels/small battles in PVE and set aside 1/2 of the map for clan wars (in which only members of warring clans can tag/fight each other) and boom in a month the PVP server will be a dead husk while everyone (including me) is living the good life on the PVE server. PVE server is about 1 or two updates away from killing the PVP server at any time, I know we shouldn't speak for everyone but I think most people don't really like the anarchy style "warhammer 40K in ships" mechanics of the PVP server and would much prefer a server that offers a mix of activities and options without constant fear of gank fleets or getting destroyed by rvr zergs.

Another DLC lineship. Not sure if I should laugh or cry honestly.

Had a wait a day for them to change, then I got a 5th rate hunt with a gold chest. Day before every single one I saw of any rate had the same mission chest reward, next day they all had gold chest rewards. Strange.

Why is my cute little age of sail naval game turning into a cold war thriller damnit.

Yes yes its been decided that green on green is punishable. Punishable by what? "appropriate actions"? a slap on the wrist? A sternly written letter? These people have like 5 alts usually, they don't give a hello kitty if one of them is one probation or gets demoted, or even banned for a few weeks. They can just start teamkilling with another one or wait till that one is off probation. Deliberate and knowing friendly fire should result in the banning of the offending account and any account that can be tied to it as an alt. Preferably permanently but maybe just for a few months. If something is punishable only so that doing it results in a minor, temporary inconvenience to 1 out of many of a players accounts, then to all intents and purposes it is not punishable.

So is this going to be one of those epic "how far do we have to break it before they are forced to fix it" moments or what?

I really, really hope he doesn't get a slap on the wrist or warning. This is so blatant its just nuts.

I'd much rather it be as suggested above, with each ship refered to by its class instead of the name of one ship of such class. The only way I see names not being annoying is if they are purely cosmetic and only shown when hailing a friendly player or in the ship equipment/stat card. I don't like the idea of "name bonuses".