Paint it black

[saintjacktar]

I understand your frustration but I'm not sure forcing an unrealistic situation just to get your way is all that warranted.

There are 7 nations and one pirate nation with, currently, only slightly different rules. The 7 nations and getting RvR tested and adjusted for them should be the top dev priority right? The pirates, love em or hate them, aren't supposed to be the primary concern of naval warfare. Currently they are just another nation with a large population and a few odd abilities. Your frustration isn't due to the pirates being OP. It's simply that they are a Zerg nation. There is nothing they are currently doing in great effect that couldn't be done by Any nation with that same groups and number of players in it. So in effect it is national play that needs to be fixed. Not just the pirates. You could force the situation, the devs drop everything and fix pirates and then you just end up getting Zerged by a huge Dutch team (example) because the factors that allowed the Zerg nations unchecked success haven't been changed.

Dear Mr. Bach,

You have raised some valid points. Might I counter agrue that had the Pirate Faction been considerably more difficult to play the current population might not be as big as it is currently, therefore strategically it would not be viable for them to Cap and Hold so many Ports as they do currently. I personally dont think they should be able to Cap ports period ,but I have already voiced my ideas for the Pirate Faction on "Pirate Mechanic Vote" thread so i digress.

Kind regards

Captain saintjacktar

USS BANSHEE (Trincomalee)

Australian Flotilla

Tattered Flags

United States

[Quineloe]

Not really. It doesn't resolve the issue of hegemony, which can be applied to any nation.

 

What doesn't apply to any nation is the ability to switch with minimal preparation to the pirates, keeping all assets, ships blueprints resources and gold.

If you want to switch to any nation, you have to find someone in that nation to hold your stuff, if that's even possible with the 5 ship limit per outpost - I have 15 ships I would not want to just wreck - hold your gold and then you delete your character, losing the blue prints of course and recreate the character and take everything back.

Or you just destroy everything you own and start at 0 gold, basic cutter and nothing else.

 

For pirates, it's just clearing out the capital warehouse and then you flip. 30 minutes tops. And you keep the blueprints.

 

BTW, if the March community vote overwhelmingly voted for new pirate mechanics, and then that gets pushed back to late Summer, then that's one more thing.

 

I mean this is something the devs should look at now

 

how many players switched from a nation to the Pirate Empire, and how many players switched from any nation to another.

 

If I wanted to switch to the pirates, all I'd have to do is sail 4 ships out of the capital to a nearby free town and put all the stuff in it out - one Indiaman trip. Then I'd be set.

 

If I wanted to switch to a nation. I'd be busy for an entire weekend.

Edited May 24, 2016 by Quineloe

[Vernon Merrill]

Has anyone been able to discern populations from any API data?

[Snoopy]

No population data from the API, but you can use the player search function in game and (with a lot of time on your hands..) count the number of players in each faction.

Doesn't give you the # of active accounts but an interesting number nonetheless.

[Bach]

Dear Mr. Bach,

You have raised some valid points. Might I counter agrue that had the Pirate Faction been considerably more difficult to play the current population might not be as big as it is currently, therefore strategically it would not be viable for them to Cap and Hold so many Ports as they do currently. I personally dont think they should be able to Cap ports period ,but I have already voiced my ideas for the Pirate Faction on "Pirate Mechanic Vote" thread so i digress.

Kind regards

Captain saintjacktar

USS BANSHEE (Trincomalee)

Australian Flotilla

Tattered Flags

United States

I totally agree. I would much prefer a more "piratey" and criminal nature to those players opting the pirate life style. But once that game change is made we will still have this mass of players that weren't weened on hunting cargo ships but in 1st rate naval tactics and port conquests. Do you expect these soldiers to just burn their rate ships hop into corvettes, hunt prey in solo and small groups? That's not what is going to happen. They will go through the necessary logistics to move 15-20 ships and stores to another nation. I've done this with 12 ships myself. It's not really as hard as Quinloe suggests. So in the end some of these players may become "piratey" but many will just become a high tech Zerg in some other nation. I will also agree with Mr. Quinloe in that the ease and lack of penalties for converting to pirate have contributed to their numbers and promote this nation. But those fleet minded players would still be fleeting and stomping out other nation under some other flag until RvR mechanics get balanced. Edited May 24, 2016 by Bach

[Quineloe]

No population data from the API, but you can use the player search function in game and (with a lot of time on your hands..) count the number of players in each faction.

Doesn't give you the # of active accounts but an interesting number nonetheless.

 

 

Unless you literally went through the whole alphabet deep enough to make sure you don't get any players shortened, this will hardly be accurate.

 

You won't cover all Captains with a search for Captain. You need to search for Captain A, Captain B, Captain C and so forth, and sometimes you have to go even deeper, as searching for "Captain Jack S" is still shortened due to high number of results.

And don't forget multiple spaces between words.

Unless you can mass pull this data through the API, this is a task taking dozens of hours.

 

 

I just tried all the names starting with AA, and that took 15 minutes including writing down by hand 1. rank 2. nationality. When I hit AAR I had to go even deeper because that had 10+ hits because of 9 characters already starting with Aar (Aarons).

 

And then there's the gem where no nationality is displayed:

 

 

and I've seen this happen with real characters. No find info on them.

 

and last but not least, you'll have user error from repetition when compiling that list

Edited May 25, 2016 by Quineloe

[saintjacktar]

I totally agree. I would much prefer a more "piratey" and criminal nature to those players opting the pirate life style. But once that game change is made we will still have this mass of players that weren't weened on hunting cargo ships but in 1st rate naval tactics and port conquests. Do you expect these soldiers to just burn their rate ships hop into corvettes, hunt prey in solo and small groups? That's not what is going to happen. They will go through the necessary logistics to move 15-20 ships and stores to another nation. I've done this with 12 ships myself. It's not really as hard as Quinloe suggests. So in the end some of these players may become "piratey" but many will just become a high tech Zerg in some other nation. I will also agree with Mr. Quinloe in that the ease and lack of penalties for converting to pirate have contributed to their numbers and promote this nation. But those fleet minded players would still be fleeting and stomping out other nation under some other flag until RvR mechanics get balanced.

Dear Mr. Bach,

The intention with my ideas is they coniside with a wipe. And there be a limit on First rates all together (For all nations). However there definitely is balancing issues that need to be re worked to allow fair and fun gameplay for where in the victors are determined by skill in both seamanship and gunnery rather than overrwelming numbers, it is also my opinion that the whole "capture trader TP primary vessel to a port of you choosing" mechanic needs to be removed so as to facilitate "Guerilla Tactics" against better more equipped Navies.

Kind regards,

Captain saintjacktar

USS BANSHEE

Australian Flotilla

Tattered Flags

United States

Edited May 25, 2016 by saintjacktar

[Lord Vicious]

Lol 1 clan defeating a nation and now is pirate unbalanced? blame devs?   Usa lost becouse they refuse to fight not becouse they not have numbers their major clan prefer to hide ,  fact is our clan worked hard to have high activity-quality, while they did not

 

if we where spanish was no difference. stop blaming the pirates. this have nothing to do about the flag we wear..   But lack of balls and organization from  usa.  Brit still stronger in numbers then pirates 

[saintjacktar]

Lol 1 clan defeating a nation and now is pirate unbalanced? blame devs? Usa lost becouse they refuse to fight not becouse they not have numbers their major clan prefer to hide , fact is our clan worked hard to have high activity-quality, while they did not

if we where spanish was no difference. stop blaming the pirates. this have nothing to do about the flag we wear.. But lack of balls and organization from usa. Brit still stronger in numbers then pirates

Dear Lord Vicious,

Ok,ok I guess everyone in the server is wrong and you and your buddies are right. The fact that your very active and organized clan beat an entire Nation is not testiment to the fact that the (U)PIRATE(U) "nation" is broken. But honestly its not the fact that you ve destroyed the US that I take issue with most of all, its that PIRATES conquered a nation. I hope they remove the Pirate "nation" ideal and replace it with a better Pirate reflection of actual Pirates. Im certain if they did you and your buddies would just change to a Nation (my monies on Spain) and continue your vendetta, but you know what? I would be fine with that. Because you worked hard for it. Definitely not because your clan has more active members ill wager then all the US clans combined "110 on Jeheils video I believe you said?" (keeping in mind that this video was recorded while you were still in Carlisle, I was in TF at this point and very active within the US at this time) I gather its a bit more now tho! and thats definitely got nothing to do with how easy it is to change to Pirate, nope not one bit. Just hard work and determination.

Warmest regards

Captain saintjacktar

USS BANSHEE

Australian Flotilla

Tattered Flags

United States

Edited May 25, 2016 by saintjacktar

[Ronald Speirs]

Lol 1 clan defeating a nation and now is pirate unbalanced? blame devs?   Usa lost becouse they refuse to fight not becouse they not have numbers their major clan prefer to hide ,  fact is our clan worked hard to have high activity-quality, while they did not

 

if we where spanish was no difference. stop blaming the pirates. this have nothing to do about the flag we wear..   But lack of balls and organization from  usa.  Brit still stronger in numbers then pirates

Sorry but you still have no idea on how it all works in this game do you, you play in a timezone when the server population is more then halved not even counting how many of those would be Alt's and then you split that between 8 nations and you see if your nation or even you group counts for more then most of the population split between these nations, there just isnt that many active or hardcore players around in most nations, i wager that everyone defecting so easily to pirates that they would have more active players then most nations.

[mouse of war]

Lol 1 clan defeating a nation and now is pirate unbalanced? blame devs?   Usa lost becouse they refuse to fight not becouse they not have numbers their major clan prefer to hide ,  fact is our clan worked hard to have high activity-quality, while they did not

 

if we where spanish was no difference. stop blaming the pirates. this have nothing to do about the flag we wear..   But lack of balls and organization from  usa.  Brit still stronger in numbers then pirates 

 

So how do you know that the Brits are stronger than the pirates?

[mouse of war]

It was a beautiful game

[HarryButpain]

I'm sure devs have a solution to switching alignment when it gets too hard or inconvenient.. I sure would..

Edited May 25, 2016 by Dark Alley Shenanigans

[B4N4N4J0E]

Why do these people want to kill the game?!

 

It is a great EA-Game and has so much potential!

 

But the game is loosing players every week. The mechanic is totally broken.

The devs need time to fix it, they need some more weeks for that. Maybe they lost some time because it took them a while to accept that it is screwed, but that doesn't matter anymore.

 

The players who love the game should do their best to keep every player in! To keep a critical mass of players, to gain a broader player base, to get positive reviews... all of that.

 

Instead: 

The communication/ community is divided and highly toxic.

Bragging in the forums & everywhere, trying to humiliate other players/nations/clans in public, behaving like 10 year olds, flaming, ganking, using exploits and finally it seems all about the epeen of some hardcore 24/7 gamers.

 

Remember:

It's a small company, the game is still EA and things have to be optimized... the game needs a solid player base or it will die before it's finished.

The community should work on that, not against it!

More players joining the pirates is making the problems even worse and giving the dev's less time to do their part. 

[SteelSandwich]

If half of the time spend on arguing was spend on writing a well thought-through pirate suggestion/alternative, there would be a framework almost capable of 1-on-1 implementation.

Mind you, i have read most of those suggestions and they nearly all are incomplete or unviable for this game.

Same can be said for the newly switched 'testers'. Putting emphasis in it wont speed up any proces.

The issue is known, put yourselves to good use and figure out ways to make the pirate lifestyle more appealing for both parties, instead of finding new ways to insult/annoy eachother. (Its getting old frankly)

[saintjacktar]

[quote name="SteelSandwich" post="262772"

Mind you, i have read most of those suggestions and they nearly all are incomplete or unviable for this game.

Dear Moderator,

I think what would be nice is if we got some dev team/mod team feedback on the viability of our suggestions so we may know if we re even on the right train of thought. This way when we post ideas and its a bad one or not viable we wont waste time discussing them in depth but more time thinking of new ones. I personally really love this game and want to help but first thread i posted got locked immediately, then i reposted in the appropriate thread but nothing heard.

Yours faithfully

Captain saintjacktar

USS BANSHEE

Australian Flotilla

Tattered Flags

United States

[Jager]

If half of the time spend on arguing was spend on writing a well thought-through pirate suggestion/alternative, there would be a framework almost capable of 1-on-1 implementation.

Mind you, i have read most of those suggestions and they nearly all are incomplete or unviable for this game.

Same can be said for the newly switched 'testers'. Putting emphasis in it wont speed up any proces.

The issue is known, put yourselves to good use and figure out ways to make the pirate lifestyle more appealing for both parties, instead of finding new ways to insult/annoy eachother. (Its getting old frankly)

would it be possible to get a post/topic of all pirate suggestions that have been stated so far or just the decent ones and i will take a look at them and try to combine/complete at least one of the ideas for the devs to consider.

[Captain Underpants]

Why do these people want to kill the game?!

It is a great EA-Game and has so much potential!

But the game is loosing players every week. The mechanic is totally broken.

The devs need time to fix it, they need some more weeks for that. Maybe they lost some time because it took them a while to accept that it is screwed, but that doesn't matter anymore.

The players who love the game should do their best to keep every player in! To keep a critical mass of players, to gain a broader player base, to get positive reviews... all of that.

Instead:

The communication/ community is divided and highly toxic.

Bragging in the forums & everywhere, trying to humiliate other players/nations/clans in public, behaving like 10 year olds, flaming, ganking, using exploits and finally it seems all about the epeen of some hardcore 24/7 gamers.

Remember:

It's a small company, the game is still EA and things have to be optimized... the game needs a solid player base or it will die before it's finished.

The community should work on that, not against it!

More players joining the pirates is making the problems even worse and giving the dev's less time to do their part.

You are quite clearly far too sensible, logical an reasonable to have a place in these forums.

Stop writing posts that make complete sense and are clearly right. Instead start writing posts that are insulting, offensive etc and then you might be taken seriously.

[Captain Underpants]

In response to the desire expressed here for a thread combining all the various Pirates Mechanics ideas we have had for the devs to (hopefully) respond to:

 

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14245-pirate-mechanics-suggestions-collection-thread/

 

Please contribute your own thoughts and ideas there.

would it be possible to get a post/topic of all pirate suggestions that have been stated so far or just the decent ones and i will take a look at them and try to combine/complete at least one of the ideas for the devs to consider.

There ya go mate - just for you:

 

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14245-pirate-mechanics-suggestions-collection-thread/

[Z-fuzi]

The devs are stubborn we all know this, but we have to appeal to them as developers and instead of telling them of this bug let's show it to them clearly.  They keep saying its alpha, we have been encouraged to brake the game many a time, so let's seriously brake it.  If we dont it will be put on the back burner and we will be waiting for 6 months before they fix the pirates. While all other nations struggle to survive as the problem gets worse and worse.  National players keep the naval action world spinning.  It's their hard work and fruitless effort which is totally under appreciated that keep this game functioning.  We all love this game!  So let's brake it to make it better

 

P.S. to the awesome mod who moved it to national news, i was going to put it in here but was scared it would get locked in here.  I think its more appropriate to be in this sub forum.  Thanks!

Bro, Dev are really working to fix several things at the same time, really listening the community for the priority, and doing a good job.

 

Why do you want to put more mess on it ? Are you bored to play Pirate ? Do you regret your choice and want a wipe earlier ?

 

Giving more confusion to player and new player will reenforce the people to leave this beautifull game, that is what you want ? A Beta with 400 players on line ?

 

Give time to dev to do their job, balancing the game is their priority of course. If you want, put the black flag on every port, dev will also move. But don't ask people to break the game...

[Vernon Merrill]

The game is ALREADY broken... That is why the whole thread devoted to threatening the US faction and demanding their surrender is so amusing and ridiculous. There is zero point or advantage to taking or defending ports at the moment, other than hoping for upgrades that everyone already has or money that is already easy to make. If you are a PvP oriented player or clan, RvR is meaningless at the moment. When politics and diplomacy are enacted, that MAY change. If it does, then I'm sure everyone will do their part. Right now, a port being black, blue, green or red just means nada.

[Ned Loe]

Meh, we talked about it since the wee months of early access, way before all this stuff with SORRY etc... The problem is, the devs are as stubborn as it gets. Chances are, doing this will only reinforce their resolve, delaying any sort of changes.

But, in the mean time... The game is broken. Play it broken or make it even more, that is the option we have.

You don't like it then take a break and wait for final release. There is no need to rush. 

[admin]

Meh, we talked about it since the wee months of early access, way before all this stuff with SORRY etc... The problem is, the devs are as stubborn as it gets. Chances are, doing this will only reinforce their resolve, delaying any sort of changes.

But, in the mean time... The game is broken. Play it broken or make it even more, that is the option we have.

 

 

We don't tolerate people who misrepresent facts about us here. 

 

• Alliances/Politics and pirate rework was one of the issues on the development priorities thread.
• It was voted as N1 priority by players
• We are working on it

We always deliver what we promise. And we always focus on what players want (ships or features). Thats the opposite of stubborn

If you continue twisting the facts (a-la lying) - you won't be welcome here any longer.

[Lytse Pier]

Repeating myself to add common sense to the thread:

 

The game is not broken, it is not finished yet. Subtle, but obvious difference.

[thp]

Meh, we talked about it since the wee months of early access, way before all this stuff with SORRY etc... The problem is, the devs are as stubborn as it gets. Chances are, doing this will only reinforce their resolve, delaying any sort of changes.

But, in the mean time... The game is broken. Play it broken or make it even more, that is the option we have.

For being playing pirate since the begin, I would like to say something if you dont mind.

The Coalition of pirate was founded and its goal was first to fight against British Royal navy because some old pirates that played before the wipe know that British nation was the biggest threat against pirate because their capital is very closed to Mortimer that allow them regularly come to hunt pirate down.  Some of old pirate  me included only want to keep the the bahamas against the USA. But the situation has changed alot since one of the USA clans joint pirate, i think everyone know SORRY was that clan and they had internal drama with US council. The pirates that USA need to fight against now are mainly former USA player that switch to pirate.

So it s mainly US players  lost  against Former US players since the begin,  I think the situation will be the same again if SORRY clan insteed of joining pirate join Spain or any nearby Nation that allow them to fight against USA.

May  I suggest that insteed you complain and blame everything on pirate, maybe you should consider what you have done to set up that situation that currently exist right now and try to correct it. If there s no more pirate nation, there will be just another nation and the thing will be the same again.

All I wish is US nation become strong again like you were before.

best regards.