Patch 9.68

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

Back to 5 minutes please.

 

3-4 minutes might be a bit better.

 

This two minute nonsense is really limiting for proper PvP.  Highly coordinated packs all communicating via voice coms have a large advantage.  I'm usually in such a pack, but still feel that it is not within the spirit of the game.  Instant voice communication across sailing ships wasn't a thing.

 

A slightly longer timer allows for factions to mean something for action other than PBs.  Players within visual range at least should be able to help out, even if they don't have absolute perfect wind to the battle - because that's what's needed unless you're already making best speed right at it.

 

The split second timing and reliance on teamspeak just doesn't feel right next to the historical feel of the remaining aspects of the game.

 

5 minutes allow ships that are nowhere near you at battle start to join in.  5 minutes ensures that you have no idea what the battlefield will look like and, in fact, causes highly coordinated packs communicating via voice comms to become even more powerful.  This isn't counter intuitive - the longer the timer, the farther away a large group can come from to jump into a battle.  The smaller the timer, the better the ability for a lone ship or a very small group to be able to attack knowing that the enemy's instant communications aren't going to land 23 ships on their head in short order.

[Sir Robert Calder]

5 minutes allow ships that are nowhere near you at battle start to join in.  5 minutes ensures that you have no idea what the battlefield will look like and, in fact, causes highly coordinated packs communicating via voice comms to become even more powerful.  This isn't counter intuitive - the longer the timer, the farther away a large group can come from to jump into a battle.  The smaller the timer, the better the ability for a lone ship or a very small group to be able to attack knowing that the enemy's instant communications aren't going to land 23 ships on their head in short order.

 

I disagree. Often times I've been in a SoL with the battle on a 2 minute timer in visual range, but due to unfavorable wind an important major battle has been closed by the time I've gotten there because I was at the back of a pack. While I understand positioning and good tags can counteract this, I think the battle timer limit needs to be re-evaluated in the future to properly accommodate the ferocity of a battle - namely the BR rating.

 

I would like to see the Battle Timer have a flat 2 minute limit for a side having a set limit of BR (i.e. 1000) and as that Battle Rating escalates for either side the join battle timer will increase appropriately based on how many players (and their appropriate BR) have joined a particular side, (i.e. at 2000v1000, timer would increase to 2:30). The logic here is that the more players a side pads in their coordinated pack to ensure victory, the more leeway they give to their victims in order for player reinforcements to arrive, especially if the battle was intended to accommodate over 20+ players in a visible area as those battle quickly inflate with BR and it's a battle both sides are confident in fighting usually. This still gives the advantage to those who wish to roam in gank squads as they have the initiative and the ability to calculate how much BR their fleet has and what battle timer they'd be comfortable with, while also giving players who are hopelessly outnumbered unexpectedly near what they figured to be a safe area more of a chance for friends to come and assist. I'd imagine this would also incentivize players looking for PvP in small gank squads to opt for more evenly-matched battles in areas they fear lots of enemy reinforcements might nearby, hopefully encouraging more meaningful PvP instead of complete stomps.

 

There are some PvP purists out there who disagree with me of course, and suggest that PvP is PvP and you chose to play on a server where you're technically open to being ganked 25v1 at any given moment, but I feel the battle join timer is something that has been hotly contested even still and no one has been particularly pleased by 2 or 5 minute timers.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Sir Robert Calder

[Sin Khan]

The problem with the 2 minuet timer is that it is effectively making it a solo players game or a wolf pack hunters game. The nation simply isn't a nation anymore since no one in your nation can help you in time unless they were already with you when the battle started. The multiplayer aspect is half what it  used to be. Being in a clan is rather pointless since they can only help other clan members in immediate vicinity.

 

The problem with this game was not the timer. The problem was the view range on open world. Open world lets you see from Charlston all the way to savanna, Georgia. This falsely lets a player discover, follow, and attack ships that should never have been spotted in the first place. Open world is meant to be a scaled system and yet normal game view range is allowed. This gives a player about a 1000 km long or more actual view range to targets.

 

Instead of giving people only 2 minuets to help out each other, view range needs to be drastically reduced. Or has everyone actually forgotten how small actual view range is for ships at sea? Being in key west and being able to spot ships in cuba is what is breaking the game. These are the same devs that claimed that I know nothing about games. Yeah right. From my perspective, its the devs of this game that know nothing about making games.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Sin Khan

[Migui]

2 mins is more than enough. It is very hard for a ganker to get in your mission if you are paying attention with 2 mins of timer, and any other kind of pvp battle, it doesn't make sense that you can undock and sail to where the battle is just to spawn on it.

 

Learn a bit of situational awareness instead.

[victor]

2 mins for entering other players' missions (so carebears will not whine)

 

more mins (5?) for "pure" PvP engagements (so small scale PvPers will have their brawl fun)

Edited April 7, 2016 by victor

[Teamski]

A minute should be added......at least.

 

-Ski

[Fizzer]

5 minutes allow ships that are nowhere near you at battle start to join in.  5 minutes ensures that you have no idea what the battlefield will look like and, in fact, causes highly coordinated packs communicating via voice comms to become even more powerful.  This isn't counter intuitive - the longer the timer, the farther away a large group can come from to jump into a battle.  The smaller the timer, the better the ability for a lone ship or a very small group to be able to attack knowing that the enemy's instant communications aren't going to land 23 ships on their head in short order.

 

Please see my post here: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/12940-battle-timers-killing-pvp/page-2#entry235483

 

Coming from further away actually levels the playing field because nation chat can be used to coordinate, you don't need to all be on the same teamspeak.  I personally like being on teamspeak with a bunch of friends, but I do see a lot of players getting frustrated that they're "out of the loop" because they're not a part of a clan or prefer not to be on voice coms, and have really tough time getting into general PvP.

 

Its all a moot point really, I think the idea of timers is silly in general.  We can come up with a better way to make for fair, interesting, realistic, and meaningful OW fights.

[VictusB]

Its all a moot point really, I think the idea of timers is silly in general.  We can come up with a better way to make for fair, interesting, realistic, and meaningful OW fights.

 

 

And there it is.  Discussions such as this do not benefit by people against the entire idea of something chiming in with a half-hearted 'suggestion' when really they just want the mechanic broken entirely till its gone.  Timers exist for a reason, some people don't like it but that is not the issue.  They exist to ensure small battles can be found EVER and to encourage PVP instead of stiffling it.  If you see a ship to engage, with 5 minute timers it doesn't matter where you are (friendly or unfriendly waters) you have no clue what battle you are going to get.  And while gankers love the gank, players at large do not.  The 2 minute mechanic allows for people to know what they are getting into and choose accordingly, it ENCOURAGES forays into enemy held waters to jump people beboping stupid and solo.  It does NOT kill fleet battles because fleets can still bebop around and fight things or engage other fleets....and solo players can try to avoid them if they are being called out or pick off stragglers who fail at keeping together with group (if you are more than 2 minutes sailing away from the group, you should not be expecting them to gank for you).

 

Additionally the 2 minute timer combined with a prohibition on joining a battle while 'invulnerable' or 'invisible' makes port docking games alot less of a thing...which is a win for everyone EXCEPT those who would like the timers gone entirely so they can play bitch games and bait all day instead of sailing and engaging in age of sail combat.

 

people act as if 2 minutes is some crazy short time.  If you are sailing within sight of your friends its not an unreasonable amount of time...if you are not...maybe you weren't a real fleet anyway yes?

 

For a historical analogy, the 2 minute timer ensures the USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere actually do battle instead of the Battle of USS Constitution vs the SOL HMS Africa and the frigates Shannon, Aeolus, Belvidera and Guerriere.

[Twig]

Le Ocean next?!

Hope you mean L'Ocean - cant wait to get her

EDIT: Yeah I Know -  I do not have the right to speak about it

Edited April 8, 2016 by Twig

[cmdrbobcito]

Coordination, training and skill should rightfully give the possessor an advantage in trade or combat...Like many commenters in this topic string, I think Fair is a silly term to use in this context. One of the often mentioned sources of abuse seems to be the "instant voice communication" available for piling on.  Why not do something to slow this communication down to better match the tempo of the game in OW?  Perhaps restrict TS and such to non OW application.  Used to coordinate large engagements such as PB's or such.  Filtering information through a communication point and redistribution source rather than broadcast to everyone on the freq. could help reduce its now common abuse...

 

Combat leaders should always be trying for the final score of 100 to nothing, not a 50-50 tie.  But casual players don't want to see themselves up against the 300 Spartans with GPS and Laser guided weapons...

[Taralin Snow]

One of the often mentioned sources of abuse seems to be the "instant voice communication" available for piling on.  Why not do something to slow this communication down to better match the tempo of the game in OW?  Perhaps restrict TS and such to non OW application.  Used to coordinate large engagements such as PB's or such.  Filtering information through a communication point and redistribution source rather than broadcast to everyone on the freq. could help reduce its now common abuse...

 

This is simply not possible to do for a PC game.  There is no way a game (or any other program) can interfere with when or how people use voice chat programs.  And even if you could, there is nothing stopping people from calling each other on the phone.  There are even conference calling services available that make it easy to have everyone on the line at the same time.

 

On any PC game, you must assume that all players are able to be in constant communication, even when they are not in game at all.  This is inherent to the PC platform itself, it is not something you can code around.

[VictusB]

Coordination, training and skill should rightfully give the possessor an advantage in trade or combat...Like many commenters in this topic string, I think Fair is a silly term to use in this context.

 

 

You nailed it on the head there.  Coordination is the hardest of the three to get down, and voice chat programs aid in that greatly.  They cannot be regulated as they are 3rd party programs, and even if you somehow coded an invasive program to scan for them people would just work around it very quickly.  To me the best way to reward good coordination and teamwork and planning is with timer manipulation.  With a long timer you can just say 'Hey guys, got this idiot to actualy fight me, everyone in the Bahamas come to me'...with a 2 minute timer a 'fleet' has to be abit more tight than that, but is rewarded for doing so as they don't have to worry about 10 SOLs sailing from KW to Cuba to jump them.

 

IMO the timers have nothing to do with 'fairness' and everything to do with requiring/rewarding organization, teamwork, and situational awareness.

[Carljcharles]

I disagree. Often times I've been in a SoL with the battle on a 2 minute timer in visual range, but due to unfavorable wind an important major battle has been closed by the time I've gotten there because I was at the back of a pack. While I understand positioning and good tags can counteract this, I think the battle timer limit needs to be re-evaluated in the future to properly accommodate the ferocity of a battle - namely the BR rating.

 

I would like to see the Battle Timer have a flat 2 minute limit for a side having a set limit of BR (i.e. 1000) and as that Battle Rating escalates for either side the join battle timer will increase appropriately based on how many players (and their appropriate BR) have joined a particular side, (i.e. at 2000v1000, timer would increase to 2:30)....

 

 

This seems like a great answer to deal with the concerns raised. Big engagements get more time for more epic battles and small pvp raiders still get a limited amount of time for a small engagement.

 

Lets try and move the debate on to something of benefit, rather than just trying to shoot down an idea without presenting an improvement or alternative. Im not a fan of the timer system generally but I don't have a better suggestion for an alternative approach. However, there does need to be an option to reduce ganking, as that really isn't much fun.

[Iratequaker]

Ganking doesn't belong to the time period, it was common for ships to sail alone since there was little to no coordination outside of signal flags that fleets could use for issuing orders once they sailed.  I think battles should be just that, battles, and open world sailing should be done from the perspective we've been given, solo.  An open world battle should have two combatants, and a battle should have many. 

 

Get rid of the open world timer and let two ships duke it out.  When it's time for battle it should be assigned by an attacker with a large window to join so the forces can amass, say two to three minutes as again, if it hadn't been coordinated previously how could it happen?  There is no spontaneity outside of single ships trading broadsides or running for the horizon.  

 

At some point people need to stop looking at this like it's just a game.  That leads to half baked mechanics.  Rather, figure out what needs to be done then make a mechanic to fit the issue and you've got yourself a fine game as a result.  Patience is a virtue. 

[Rigel]

I would think the timer for players to enter a battle would be related to sight distance as that would have been the only way for people to know a battle was occurring. That or maybe hearing the engagement and sailing closer to check it out. I'm no programmer, but perhaps it could be determined how long it would take to travel to an engagement within sight and set the timer to enter the battle relative to that. Then you run into weather conditions limiting visibility and such but that might be thinking too much. I would venture to say within eyeshot possibly ear shot and a timer relative to that and wind conditions/generic rate of travel for a ship would be a good starting point. It may not be completely accurate but it is at least somewhat realistic. Same should be the case for port battles unless you implement some sort of espionage factor/intelligence reports into the game.

 

I think espionage and intelligence reports would be an interesting addition to the game. Once a group has declared they plan to make an assault on a port… There could be some sort of intelligence check that would provide additional time for preparations, or the defending port could be completely caught off guard aside from anyone seeing the fleet en route. That may not be feasible… But it would be an interesting addition If possible.

[Mayhem Like Me]

Two minutes is too long - make instant instances!  Where does it make since to say, "I'm going to pew pew if my buddy gets here before the timer runs out?"

 

Make the instances instant - ship v ship --- 1 v 1   if they in a group then they get split - whoever makes the hit gets the fight!

Edited April 12, 2016 by Mayhem Like Me