PVP2 - A dark day for pirates

[Lord_Smily]

Arrr me fellow scurvy dogs

 

It is with a heavy heart and somber thought that I announce very dark news indeed.  OMG, bribed by the cheese and wine from the treacherous French have given up the life of wenching and anarchy have joined the ranks of the forked tonged frogs.  As if this treachery was not enough the clan Invictus also gave up the life of wenching and anarchy and abandoned us scurvy dogs to drink tea with the redcoats.  This left only Crimson Flotilla and other individual pirates left to defend our pirate empire.  The French dogs using most underhanded tactics, launched surprise attacks on several of our ports while we were asleep from a night of drinking.  With two daggers stuck into our backs and a combined assault from French, British, American, and Dutch armadas it looks like our pirate empire will fall. 

 

This is however not the end for the pirates.  We who still believe in anarchy and the finer things in life shall continue to fly the jolly roger.  We will be the nation in exile hunting down those traitors who have stabbed us in the back.  We shall lurk by the shores and continue to rape, pillage, and burn. We will become the stuff of nightmares that will keep children and captains alike, awake at night.  The pirate empire may be no more but we are far from done. 

 

[omgeulogy]

so um you had 2 weeks to do all these crazy pirate things you speak of yet you never did and i doubt losing your carebear zone in the antilles will change that. Nice to have dreams though i suppose

[Kutai]

A shame to see it go this way for you lads. Need some assistance from PVP1 Pirates?

Edited February 29, 2016 by Kutai

[ajffighter86]

Actually eulogy, I think this is progress.

 

I like the part about lurking by the shores and nightmares and such. I'd almost have him confused with a real pirate.

Edited February 29, 2016 by ajffighter86

[Jackalope]

 

 The French dogs using most underhanded tactics, launched surprise attacks on several of our ports while we were asleep from a night of drinking.

 

I guess you could say, what goes around comes around. Only difference is, when this whole thing started, you outnumbered the french, they've never had that advantage.

[jpjchris]

so um you had 2 weeks to do all these crazy pirate things you speak of yet you never did and i doubt losing your carebear zone in the antilles will change that. Nice to have dreams though i suppose

Sir,

Regardless of the pirate scourge being a mutual thorn in the side of all civilised nations, your statement is especially cancerous.

"Carebears"? Really? What is this, EVE??

Edited February 29, 2016 by jpjchris

[Vllad]

Sir,

Regardless of the pirate scourge being a mutual thorn in the side of all civilised nations, your statement is especially cancerous.

"Carebears"? Really? What is this, EVE??

 

If you understood why the Pirate nation was breaking apart I think this comment makes more sense.

 

Essentially you had two kinds of Pirates. The ones that wanted to PVP and duke it out with the US and those that wanted to run away and grind PVE. When those that wanted to PVE ran away that sealed their fates.

 

This is the core of the debate within the Pirate nation. Putting that in context once those PVP guilds left for France to get even for that treachery I am sure you can understand why those comments are more than relevant.

[Obliterati]

It'll be fun to be a pirate and do piratey things eventually. Reinforcements, neutral ports, lack of NPC fleets all kind of work together to screw the pirates over in their current form. That and Mortimer is by far the worst location for a capital on the map. Unless your on at least equal footing with the other nations.

 

The simple truth is there is no benefit to being a pirate with the current mechanic. Only negatives. Any nation can play the exact same way a pirate could. Such as freeport commerce raiding.

 

I hope they intend on changing that soon. So pirates wont be so reliant on ports anymore.

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

GGS Frenchies, well played I guess. Pirates were strong despite their smaller numbers becauee of the amount of higher level players we had. OMG and Invictus leaving made a huge dent into our capacity to keep control of the land we conquered. Unless we are super organized and chose which of the north or south we keep, this is a role inversion for sure. CF, I and OMG were the key to keeping the north and only CF and plebs remain to hold the north. CF has good players but we are very few, so it looks grim, very grim for the CDR area.

 

That French war was never intended on the part of CF and I've been saying since it started that we should stop it asap and get all local nations to work together to eventually face the Brits or US, whichever would come first. The boys down south had other plans so we helped them a bit, more as a debt for them helping us than by conviction.

 

I'd like to say CF is still alive and intact, because we've seen alot of rumors about us disbanding. We are still 58 members strong and lost one guy to the OMG migration.

 

Have fun capping all those empty ports and ganking the greens in CDR OMG, as it turns out you guys traded 4 quarters for a dollar, ganking pirate noobies instead of ganking french newbies.

[Obliterati]

I personally find it hilarious. OMG switches sides saying they wanted PVPs and to stop grinding empty port battles. What is the first thing they do? Login 5 minutes after shut down specifically to grind empty port battles... F'n HILARIOUS in my humble opinion.

[Scraggly Beard]

If you understood why the Pirate nation was breaking apart I think this comment makes more sense.

 

Essentially you had two kinds of Pirates. The ones that wanted to PVP and duke it out with the US and those that wanted to run away and grind PVE. When those that wanted to PVE ran away that sealed their fates.

 

This is the core of the debate within the Pirate nation. Putting that in context once those PVP guilds left for France to get even for that treachery I am sure you can understand why those comments are more than relevant.

 

You're condemning pirates for not being PVP purists, even as they're double teamed by nations who refuse to PVP each other and have such vast territory that they have beginner friendly zones shielded from PVP by hours of travel time to the nearest enemy port?  On top of that we have 2-3 major pirate clans that left for other nations and are now bravely PVP'ing the remaining, mostly new pirate players.  Yes, it's the pirates who are the ones looking to make things easy for themselves...

 

The pirate nation isn't breaking apart because people don't want to PVP, we're breaking apart because taking on multiple larger nations with no advantage in resources, labor hours, or travel time can only result in defeat through attrition.

[Vllad]

I personally find it hilarious. OMG switches sides saying they wanted PVPs and to stop grinding empty port battles. What is the first thing they do? Login 5 minutes after shut down specifically to grind empty port battles... F'n HILARIOUS in my humble opinion.

 

You guys don't understand players like OMG at all.

 

It wasn't about the empty port battles. They just wanted someone to support their PVP play style. OMG comes down to Pedernales bay and all they see are French Fleets doing nothing but searching out and destroying Pirates. All the French team does is PVP. Our nation isn't built on the backs of grinders/econ players, it is built on the backs of PVP players. We pvp 24/7 which is why we weren't as high of level.

 

 

The French econ, the players, our resources, our clans, everything about France is built around PVP. Can you make a guess as to who might find that more interesting than the PVE grind you guys were doing? Had the rest of the Pirate clans gave them even a bread crum of what they were looking for you never would have lost them.

 

OMG told you guys multiple times what they wanted but bad Pirate leadership didn't listen. You could see what happened to the Pirate team coming a mile away. It just needed a little nudge.

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

The fact remains that there are hardly any hardcore pvpers in the pirate nation right now so that pvp you guys are so proud and happy about is going to turn stale fast.

 

Inb4 OMG switches to Sweden or Spain cause they are bored in that new blue doghouse they are now.

[Mrdoomed]

I am a pirate in this server and have been publicly called names and insulted and everything in between by the rats because i pvp 24/7 . Sure i hunt trade ships or ai in between but i look for players regardless of thier ship size. Big or small ill fight them if i stand any chance at all.

Being told im wothless because im not a certain level by people who only pve does not make sense to me and its going to be the end of the pirates on this server. My friend and i aint going nowhere but i doubt many people want to be constantly insulted for pvp play ON A PVP SERVER.

I do and will continue to enjoy being a pirate thr way i want to be and i have had great great battles with brits , the US and spain and most of the guys where fun to fight...i few of the brits ( one clan really) are total aholes and horrible but its ok i enjoy mocking them .

Pirate on pirates.

[Bach]

I don't think it was a dark day for pirates at all.

They took Islet back from the USA. This is a significant turn of events. Maybe they hold it, maybe they don't. But the fact they could take it says a lot and may even be the tiniest spark that is about ignite a fire storm of true pirates.

Yes you lost some pirate clans. But is it a loss or a reorganization? You can't force a team of different thinking groups to play nice together for but short periods of time. They can come together for any one grand event. But if you try to force it together long term you get a tiring series if arguementive meetings trying to decide on goals, targets or just about anything. Why, because the common core just isn't there.

@Brucy

This is the exact same thing I told the French team when players were leaving and heading off to New Orleans following your blitz of our ports. "I know it seems bad buts it's really not. We're actually increasing our value and pound for pound we're getting better." If CF stick this out the same will happen for you. Be it good or bad the smaller core group of pirates that emerge will be more like minded thinkers. Just the core group however, I'm pretty sure the pirate team will always be plagued by PVE oriented Johnny Depp wanna be's. That's the real curse of the black pearl.

Congrats Pirates on taking back Islet!

Edited February 29, 2016 by Bach

[Slamz]

I personally find it hilarious. OMG switches sides saying they wanted PVPs and to stop grinding empty port battles. What is the first thing they do? Login 5 minutes after shut down specifically to grind empty port battles... F'n HILARIOUS in my humble opinion.

 

The difference is that after France retakes its empty ports, we can figure out where we want to go to war. The sooner we reset our ports, the sooner we can pick a new fight. (The worst thing you did to France was delay our ability to fight anyone except the pirates.)

 

The pirates already had ports, already had a fight and was still attacking empty ports for no apparent reason. You gave the impression that there was no end in sight to grinding fleets and sacking empty ports.

 

Maybe there was a long term plan that would have given everyone lots of PvP but you took too long and lost your PvP players as a result. I did warn you about boring people to death.

 

That's going to be France's immediate challenge, too. On one hand, we need our ports back. On the other hand, we can't spend two weeks totally dicking around or everyone is going to get antsy.

 

That French war was never intended on the part of CF

 

There was a mistake here that I think is an interesting case study, and one France could potentially face with the Swedes.

 

When you come across a weaker team, I think your options are:

A. Ignore them. Just totally leave them alone. Non-aggression pact or whatever.

B. Make a mutually beneficial deal with them. If anything, help make sure they have what they need to be a strong potential ally and understand the need to face a greater mutual enemy.

C. Destroy them so completely that they quit the game or reroll.

 

What you don't do is what the pirates did to France, which is attack them, sack so many ports that they can't be an effective port-war machine, smacktalk them, but avoid actually crushing them. All this does is give rise to a nation of motivated PvPers. I was baffled that [CF] never came down to just camp us in the Pedernales bay area for a week straight. There came a point where you simply had to do this. You didn't want the war but you had one and you didn't finish it. You could have forced us to move. We actually got to hang on because ultimately we ended up fighting the third-stringers and getting a lot of kills that helped motivate people to stay and fight.

 

Strategically, once it became too late to do A (because CF attacked us in the north) and B (because FC attacked us in the south) you needed to do C: crush us.

 

That does require a lot of relentless and potentially boring camping but it's what you're left with.

 

We shall lurk by the shores and continue to rape, pillage, and burn. We will become the stuff of nightmares that will keep children and captains alike, awake at night.  The pirate empire may be no more but we are far from done. 

 

Here's what I would do if I was going to play as an anarchy type pirate guild:

 

* Spend a few days driving around and creating outposts in various Free Ports. Probably 4 outposts, widely separated.

* Pop out of a Free Port and PvP in the area for a few days.

* When the locals have wised up and started camping your Free Port, transfer to another outpost and do the same thing there. The idea is to keep rotating around, finding fights and then having the ability to easily bail when an area gets too hot with pirate hunters.

* Occasionally sack an undefended port. Buy up any cheap shipbuilding materials and cart them to one of your Free Ports.

* Never defend these ports. In fact, don't even go back there unless they sit unmolested for long enough that it's worth going for another load of cheap resources.

 

I think you could run a pretty good "PvP no RvR" guild this way. Technically you could do this as any nation but I would think as Pirates, you'd find more interested people willing to join you in this, if they had a leader (or, ideally, small pre-existing guild) willing to rally the troops and create the plan and get it rolling.

 

[PURGE] (and, I suspect, [OMG]) won't do this because we do like the RvR game but I can see it as a viable alternative for people who just like ship combat (especially frigate combat) and don't care about ports.

[Arbour]

GGS Frenchies, well played I guess. Pirates were strong despite their smaller numbers becauee of the amount of higher level players we had. OMG and Invictus leaving made a huge dent into our capacity to keep control of the land we conquered. Unless we are super organized and chose which of the north or south we keep, this is a role inversion for sure. CF, I and OMG were the key to keeping the north and only CF and plebs remain to hold the north. CF has good players but we are very few, so it looks grim, very grim for the CDR area.

 

That French war was never intended on the part of CF and I've been saying since it started that we should stop it asap and get all local nations to work together to eventually face the Brits or US, whichever would come first. The boys down south had other plans so we helped them a bit, more as a debt for them helping us than by conviction.

 

I'd like to say CF is still alive and intact, because we've seen alot of rumors about us disbanding. We are still 58 members strong and lost one guy to the OMG migration.

 

Have fun capping all those empty ports and ganking the greens in CDR OMG, as it turns out you guys traded 4 quarters for a dollar, ganking pirate noobies instead of ganking french newbies.

 

First off "Pirates were strong despite their smaller numbers becauese of the amount of higher level players we had." ..... by even your own estimates and my own,  you were at least the 3rd most populated nation on the server, I guess "were" being key there.   You had 75 active defending 3 ports one night.  You had the advantage of high lvls and high numbers.  

Secondly, don't worry we prolly won't be "ganking pirates" for long, maybe a week to solidify our victory, then on to bigger and hopefully better enemies to fight. 

[Warrax]

"Vive la France !!"

Congratz

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

The problem with the free port approach slamz is that it only appeals to the pure pvp players. Its not a viable long term plan because going that route means we are cutting ourselves from new players and putting a huge damper on our capacity to keep our players progressing level-wise..

 

Proof of this is how most french players except the turncoats are in Cerbs. Pirates were at a point where we could have excluded Cerbs from port battles and still fill the 25 slots.

 

The pirate mechanics really need to be reworked... Everybody hates and distrusts pirates by default, so thriving as one is easier said than done. I will repeat this, when we showed up here we never had any intention of wiping the french. That idea was the southern clan's idea and we relunctantly helped because they helped us initially.

 

We mostly took neutral ports to make the CDR area... Remember?

[Arbour]

The problem with the free port approach slamz is that it only appeals to the pure pvp players. Its not a viable long term plan because going that route means we are cutting ourselves from new players and putting a huge damper on our capacity to keep our players progressing level-wise..

 

Why on God's green Earth would anyone join a "pirate" faction if they didn't want to fight?  France has used our PvP ways as a recruiting tool with success, you can too.  As far as progression goes, you know that PvP gives your 2x xp and 2x gold over missions and fleet grinding right?  So if someone has 4 hours to play a night, guesstimating the finding of and fight of a battle to be 1 hour each, the best use of that time.....the more bang for the buck.....the fastest way to progress is PvP.  Now if there are no targets around, then you can do missions or fleet grinding.  This is how France is lvling up their players, with success, so you can too.  Learn to learn from the enemy. 

Edited February 29, 2016 by Arbour

[Arbour]

If you want the pirate nation to succeed, you have to caste aside the this idea that is entrenched in your mindset that ports are important and ports are how you win.  This idea is false.  Once you trully understand that, the game and it's strategy get a whole lot simpler.  

Edited February 29, 2016 by Arbour

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

Why on God's green Earth would anyone join a "pirate" faction if they didn't want to fight?  France has used our PvP ways as a recruiting tool with success, you can too.  As far as progression goes, you know that PvP gives your 2x xp and 2x gold over missions and fleet grinding right?  So if someone has 4 hours to play a night, guesstimating the finding of and fight of a battle to be 1 hour each, the best use of that time.....the more bang for the buck.....the fastest way to progress is PvP.  Now if there are no targets around, then you can do missions or fleet grinding.  This is how France is lvling up their players, with success, so you can too.  Learn to learn from the enemy. 

 

I applaud that. All I'll say is that I've played a million PVP MMO's and true hardcore PVP players are few and far between, the average player is either an opportunistic PVP player or just someone who enjoys the thrill and danger of being on a PVP server without necessarily planing/working to get it.

 

I'm more of the opportunistic type myself.. I thought the game mechanics would allow for pirates to be stealthy, fast, etc., allowing me to you know, be a pirate. Pirates didn't fight nations back in the days, they hid from them and stuck at targets of opportunity as a way to riches. I hope the game mechanics for pirates change soon, because as it is, playing the nation game is not viable as pirates unless we have huge numbers, which is not the case.

[Obliterati]

Slamz your posts are TLDR. Seriously buddy short and sweet.

 

Personally I agree that passivity and some internal strife lead to the fall of pirates. From the 75 players or so that defended Aves and the south that night against your little nation circle jerk. Less than 25 actives remain. Disorganized as hell (SE refuse to even get on the same comms). There are probably another 20 effectively solo pirates. Whom think its a great idea to take basic cerbs into a fleet battle against 3rd rates.

 

I don't blame OMG for leaving one bit. Personally i was pissed as hell when i heard Invictus didn't want to fight for 2 more weeks. Though picking the pirates to fight just because you didn't get your way was a bit childish. Though if Invictus hadn't flip flopped. We might have made a good go of it for lawls and fun all around. As it stands thats not really possible.

 

I think we'll see a revitalization of pirates after new mechanics are implemented, but for now i don't really see the pirates rebuilding. No real reason to. Hence the mass exodus to other nations. I expect most of the remaining pirates will base from freeports and ignore most PBs.

 

[Arbour]

I'm more of the opportunistic type myself.. I thought the game mechanics would allow for pirates to be stealthy, fast, etc., allowing me to you know, be a pirate. Pirates didn't fight nations back in the days, they hid from them and stuck at targets of opportunity as a way to riches. I hope the game mechanics for pirates change soon, because as it is, playing the nation game is not viable as pirates unless we have huge numbers, which is not the case.

 

But the game mechanics do allow for that, ... I know cause I've done that.  Read Slamz post again and truly understand it.  What he said, and I agree with it as a very viable strategy, is exactly what you are describing above.  Move to a free town, hunt players, and as soon as the nation you are attacking gets wise about it and send a fleet to counter your efforts, retreat and move to another free town.  Rinse and repeat.   You don't need huge numbers.  My french clan send sorties of 1 or 2 or at most 3 ships into Swedish territory, attack what they can then move to another area.  And if the enemy calls reinforcements, they can only call enough to make the fight even, then you have your fleet to grind and lvl off of if your captains can manage to fight a NPC in a equal ship, which even average combat players can do.  Piratacy is a viable strategy that is currently available in the game mechanics you just have to do it. 

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

If you want the pirate nation to succeed, you have to caste aside the this idea that is entrenched in your mindset that ports are important and ports are how you win.  This idea is false.  Once you trully understand that, the game and it's strategy get a whole lot simpler.  

 

But they are important even though it's not impossible to play without them. Not having ports means not getting new players and not keeping lowbies. You guys got a lucky break with the OMG thing because we lost half our muscle to that move and you gained it. Had this not happened, 2 weeks from now I would be curious to see how many new french players there would be. Remember that you have the whole server on your side, while we have the whole server against us. You guys have to worry about 2-3 ships occasionally camping Fort Royale.. We have whole fleets of US and Brits camping Mortimer during prime time that are too big to fit into a 25 man battle, ganking everything that moves. We can't use neutral ports like you do to gather resources, we're stuck with only free ports which are all pretty much gouged price-wise...

 

Not saying it's impossible, by trying to sell such a plan to all the Jack Sparrow wannabes is going to be an undertaking to say the least.