Galileus

I'm against the custom "it's taboo, games can't handle it!" approach. Especially since other media forms supposedly can. That doesn't mean I'm all in for including taboos in a game just because. And this is why this post, that could be huge, will be short and simple. Touchy topics are touchy, and obviously need a proper handling. The first and foremost thing you need to check on your list is - what does it add to my game? Exactly - what does it add to the game? Can anyone answer that? A new cargo? So? Wouldn't adding cotton do the same? Then why go for the touchy subject, that, as proven time and time again on this forums is touchy? An ability to take enemy crew as cargo? You get the same for just getting their cargo. Ability to get rid of enemy crew? Well, throw them overboard, same effect. Illegal goods? Don't need no slaves for that. Chance of slave riots? Crews ain't good enough? And so on, and so on... If only reason for picking up a taboo is to pick up a taboo, why bother? And if you do it to be edgy, well, my thoughts on you are not well suited for these forums. So again - why? And this is a honest question. I see this topic come up and stir some opposite views, and I ain't even interested. From gaming viewpoint it's bland addition that doesn't really do anything on it's own. Normally, it would be just "meh". And as this topic is loaded... well, why go for it?

As in the topic - I started writing a huge post on my thought about customization (price, frequency, mechanics to balance both, danger, profits and so on) and realized even with everything I found on my own I still had no idea what is the overall plan of the Devs, or even if we heard one. Anyone more informed, so I can account for it in my post and not end up making someone read through an essay only to find out what I proposed is destined to fail up front?

Now I want a goo ocean mode. Can we have it? Please? Pwetty please? CoD guys have zombie modes in their zombie modes, why can't we get a goo ocean? :<

I am against repair kits and hope they are replaced by simple survival / repair mode in the future, that takes into account the amount of planks, cloth and such you have on board. I am against making it "well, you cannot do anything now" kind of deal. It just sounds so boring! I see no point for it being that way, and neither do I see any need for "stop repairs when shot" stuff. It would just turn to be an epic pain in the bottoms, both during a fight and on the open seas. Taking player agency away is almost always bad. I know why you proposed it like that, so how about this: - Repair mode not only consumes your stuff to work (as in - uses the "repair kits" you bought in harbors) but it also debuffs everything else - like survival mode. Slower reloads, slower sails and so on. - Repair speed is balanced against another ship of same class, with all cannons available and loaded with cannon balls, in sailing mode. If you start repairs at 100% (as in - you're repairing everything they throw at you) you'll survive for X more 75% accurate broadsides. - Repair mode debuffs are balanced against another ship in repair mode. The debuffs should be such, that with repair speed decided in last point you can repair X% of the damage by a 75% accurate broadside before the next one hits. This allows you to keep repair mode in check and decide upon it exact performance in the most interesting cases. Obviously I didn't try to fill in the numbers, as my proposition is of a process more than a result Still, if balanced based on these scenarios, I do believe it could be kept in check (so that it behaves perfectly as planned) and NOT take away all the agency from player.

Having him stop by would be kinda hard with few thousands kilometers between us We ended up on twitch, and are discussing possibility of either recording or streaming a podcast type discussions with some light games in the background, NA being a favorite on my end.

Well, yeah, this is what I said in my first post ^^' Anyhow, steam saying broadcast is now on turns out to be a red herring. Doesn't work And just in case - I'm not making it so that they rush to my help and terrorize steam just to make it work I've posted it in case this is something that was overlooked and/or can be fixed with a flip of a switch. Anything more that than and sure, I agree, steam version will fix it.

I prefer Xsplit,l thank you very much, this is not the question at hand. At any rate, literally seconds ago got a "broadcasting enabled" pop-up, investigating.

So, I just wanted to show NA to a friend using steam broadcast. Doesn't work, obviously, as the game is hidden to all people who doesn't own it. Is it possible and/or is there any interest in either making the game stream-able or public?

Ehhh, it really doesn't work like that. First off, I don't think these guys give out their code like fresh burgers. And mind you, you still gotta pay for fresh burgers. Second point, it's not like you flip a switch and hey! It's still a good sim and works now for game devs! Nope, you decrease iterations too much, the whole thing collapses. There are dozen of simulation and raytracing techniques that default to 32 iterations and you don't see them plopped like that into a game with the slider moved down to 4x or 2x. Because they stop working, the result is so bad looking and wonky, it's not worth showing in a 1998' game, not to mention STILL tanks the FPS. And finally, third point. Lower the amount of sensors and particles by half. You end up with FIVE TIMES the simulation intensity, and this is with just 10 ships far away from each other. Yeaaaah...

There is a huge difference between "real-time" and "video game real-time"

I dislike it a lot, as it is presented. In general, stun effect in game dev are BAD. Simply that - bad. It takes you out of the game, forces to wait an arbitrary period before you can do something you wanted to and generally decrease the quality of gameplay. What stuns REALLY mean (in REALITY) is not "your crew has been shocked!" but "Player 1, please wait 10 seconds before resuming your game, ads may or may not be broadcasted". Stun IS bad. That being said, inputting stun mechanics into your game requires a lot of thought, just to reduce the cases of players watching their screen blindly waiting for the ad to end. It needs to be situational minimum, it needs to be well justified and it needs to be well visualized. Then, and ONLY then you can remove the bland ad watching with actual immersion in the situation. Needless to say "stun after each shot" or even "stun after a rake shot" OR EVEN "stun after a grape rake shot" are not really fulfilling these needs. And with that 60% own damage output? Enough situations out there to make it each shot, could be as well arbitrary "this guy is stronger, so he get's to stun you all the time! YAY GAME FUN!". Terrible. No. NO! So first and foremost, there are two problems to address: 1. How to limit the stun effect to a certain maximum? - Percentage based is boring and not fun, but works. - Ship size CANNOT be as wildly important in it as propsed - otherwise it makes for very bad experience at worthwile stun duration / strength effect; and makes it worthless to care about stun with variables balanced to negate "stronk ship stun much" scenario. - Need to find an appropriate situation for inducing stun-like effects with both logical explanation and a cue for visualization. - Need to balance stun effects to be worthwhile BUT situational - as in, if you're close to or in position to have a chance at inducing stun effect, it's better to try it out rather than go with whatever you were doing. Maneuvering into stun shots from OOP cannot be worthwhile. Tactics must gain from usage of stun effect, tactics need to suffer from depending on stun effect. - Actually, introducing more of stun limits the stun. If stun would be a more versatile mechanic, not limited to shooting only, it can be reduced in shooting itself and still hold the candle - and feel more vibrant and a part of greater mechanism than "a magic spell" it is proposed as as of now. Yes, a magic spell - because realism be damned, games do it as magic spells too. If you were to be stunned on impact (ramming? possibly stunning rammer even more than the rammed, with good proportions of both ships), an explosion nearby or on your ship, a lightning striking nearby (can't imagine an effect like that to be happening too often, like 1/100 players experiencing it, good opportunity is what I call it) 2. How to properly visualize the effect? - It's all about the crew. Your crew MUST react to the situation that caused stun, or else the whole thing backs down to your old, hated "you're stunned: 8.23s and counting down" message. Good visualization would be one that let's you understand the mess you're in and see at what point you recover from stun without ANY UI help. - Voice cues could play a big role in the whole thing. After loosing enough percentage of mid-ship sailors (gunners) to a grape shot, a few commands and questions screamed by your crew would amount to insane immersive values. "Who's on the guns!?", "Man the cannons! MAN THE CANNONS!", "Get back on your stations!" and so on. - Proper animations of either men being stunned and falling down or running through the decs, with a figure(s) of officers screaming and pointing at stuff. With these not taken into consideration and not realized at least in some extent, I would not recommend going with any stuns. They are as game'y as mechanics get (in a bad way), they do not offer too much of a tactical consideration (being either random or a stationary buff, or a position you get to, or a "you dead" prompt) and worst of all they are redundant to crew loss and morale mechanic. They offer short bursts of what crew management does, just doing it worse and in less interesting and meaningful way. As far as stun is concerned, I'm much more excited with what can be done AROUND it than what can be done WITH it.

I had the great ideas? Boy, you got your bullzeye right there. IMHO religions and such should have mostly political meaning. Don't ask me for historical background, because I don't have one. Still, they simply fit the gameplay element - allow them to be a safe card or a boost to prestige/political standings. Even more importantly, this is a perfect place to allow players to remove / limit the price on their head (for a CONSIDERABLE donation or a quest line, obviously). For me, it fits perfectly. Obviously that idea being a part of the bigger picture

What it would be for sure is a drag for devs to create something that would be under-powered and probably rarely used. I dislike this idea very much, mostly for time needed to completion versus the gain for the game.

I'll double for Grim here, and ask people to at least indicate what they're opposed to. I am in the "faith? not in my game!" camp, but still I wouldn't mind churches and religions existing in the game world (just not being a major gameplay element). Just saying "no" on the other hand is silly and doesn't help no-one. It's like leaving devs to a guessing game how far are you willing to "no", and if it's up for guessing, they will simply ignore it. As any sane person would. Are you opposed to faith and religion being element of gameplay? Are you opposed to religions being able to send you on their own quests? Being a trade partner? Being in the game? Are you opposed to existance of religion at all and think there shouldn't be even as much as a mention of it, and all "oh my god!" in dialogue should be swapped to "bless me... wait, no... "jesu... wait, also no... something else? If you take your time to answer, take your time to answer. If you're not willing to do so, do not do so.

I agree with that. As in - religion is in game as a proxy for whatever we needed anyway, but doesn't stand out on it's own. Give them some little silly quests, maybe lock quantity of trade to reputation with them as a faction, do not allow faith to become anything dividing or hot. This way you keep the feel of the period without stepping on a land... uhm... seamine ^^'

Don't you think "everyone else" should come first, and only THEN we should possibly maybe care about singular players?

Can we agree we are not 19th century admirals and that we don't want to be forced to poop in buckets to keep realism going? And if so, can we completely drop this stupid tangent? Seriously, I don't care how 19th century admirals pooped. So please, let's keep talking about the game instead.

Why not go the other way around? Remove friend / foe markers, keep ship name tags / player name tags in scope. That way you actually need to keep track of who is who, look at their flags and remember their ships, while still being able to call them by name.

I didn't read the WHOLE topic, sure, but I read enough. Quite a few people suggested recognizing ships by their paint, class and flags. This is NOT an un-obtrusive replacement for a name-tag. If I have missed something, sorry, my bad. I have nothing against less obtrusive name-tags, Im all for it - these we have now are rather hideous. But then again, it IS an alpha. If it is about having more info the closer you're in (at long range - zoom in to see name, closer - name given, zoom in for flags etc), Im all for it. This is how almost any sailing game I played worked, and I love it. Why I am... actively... defending my PoV though is because of suggestions I read at the beginning of the topic - pretty much banning social interactions with enemies in an MMO. If there was a consensus on that somewhere I've missed, again - my bad. This is quite a topic to read

So far, every single multi game I played, a enemy who's name I recognize and fear was much more unnerving and immersive than "a guy". Sorry, but I do not understand your argument. For me personally, a named and recognized enemy is insanely more scary than... well, "a guy". Again. I seriously hate idea of removing the personal element from enemy encounters. Why play this as MMO then, anyway? Why not co-op? You say it's pointless to know your enemy's name, and for me it is game breaking. I don't want to go against a bunch of random encounters. I want to make enemies, I want to remember the name of a guy who put that broadside in me, I want to play with people. Not with nameless proxies. It IS that important to me. Yes, I do dare to disagree with you, even understanding you want to keep friendlies names. No amount of pleading will make me understand it more. And I will not re-read your post. My opinion is NOT a result of misunderstanding a higher truth :/

Yes. A huge one. This is not going to be "inside game" forever. This is aimed to be an MMO. MMO is many times, for many, MANY people much more about social interactions than about game itself. It's a place to hang out, playing the game. Making it so you need to close in to combat range? Sure. Removing enemy / friendlies names completely? Putting MMO argument aside for now, realism is NOT an be all end all argument. Realism is good only until realism is good. Realism doesn't fit everything, everytime, everywhere. Most of the game don't even care about realism that much. And you know why? For the sake of fun. Fun > realism, NOT fun = realism. There are dozens of different types of people and dozens of different concepts of a perfect balance between arcade and realism. For me? Realism can and will decrease a game's value in some scenarios. "Because it's more realistic" is not an argument - it's a statement of one's opinion. You cannot argue with "more realistic = better" - that's lazy and simply wrong. Each scenario needs to be considered singularly, considered against the expected result and considered against expected audience. And if the expected audience are only people who put realism in the first place... well... the game I could play, the ghost-town I would mind. MMOs need audience, as onto their core is the social element. Marketing singularly only to a very niche gamers is not the best of plans for an MMO. There is also another part that I didn't see mentioned here. Immersion, right? It's more immersive to have to look at the flags to recognize ships? Contrary to popular belief, I would say no. And this is simply due to the fact that a chat will be there and has to be there - so in the end you get people asking who's flying what flags, who's in what ship, mistaking one another for someone else and generally having a bad time. That would get me out of the game right away. If I could really be immersed in a MMO in the first place. Let's be honest here... at every turn in an MMO you're going to be reminded you're in a game. That's simply the case with MMOs. And that being said, limiting spotting distance? Limiting the ways to know a name of random passerby or an enemy? Sure, ain't got nothing against that. Making it so you have to look at flags and ships to recognize someone? I'll pass.