A couple of quality of life changes would improve the overall experience

[Migui]

I have returned after being months out. I got this game and i was super engaged. Then i reached the 3rd rate rank and it became a circlejerk around port battle snipping and the mission grind was super boring. I left and eventually most of my friends did too. And i had a blast, in some moments, because naval combat is awesome. And i want to play this game and get engaged again. 

 

However, i see a few of things drawing me back, that have no easy solution.

 

If i have limited playtime let's say i log in and want to play. Oh no, the wind is against the direction i have to sail for all the missions i'm getting. And they are far because they are higher ranked. And my ships are slower. I can wait, or logoff. Or sail during 10 minutes till i arrive to the point, to fight the same battle to get a tiny amount of XP. It makes the grind punishing more than fun. And on this game having the capability of sailing a 1st rate doesn't mean you are going to go with your Santisima and be the king of the seas. So why delaying it with a rinse and repeat bottleneck of the same battle over and over? Also the AI will teach you to fight in a way that will get you destroyed in PVP. So it's not even useful in terms of combat. I still like to shoot at stuff, though. But players are always more interesting.

 

If i want to go PVP, Open World PVP will be mostly ganking and kiting at long  range with frigates. I remember that we were all the time with trincos and rennomees (i don't know the current meta) and it all was about kiting a whale until it eventually died or gave up. It could last an annoying amount of time. And this of course would mean hunting him first with the weird tag mechanics. It will be a chasing game because of course the victim doesn't want to lose. He has very few chances or if anything, he will get our group in battle and call for reinforcements for when we leave it to have his revenge. Which is fine, but is again revolving around a particular mechanic to get the world done.

 

Of couse i still have the chance to do group battles and such, and that was what we ended doing. Because i logged in and oh, we have to craft a new ship in order to progress because of port battles. Okay. No hunt today. Oh, we need to capture 3rd rates for port battles. Rip. 

 

The trend i see on this game is that you have a sense of wasting a huge amount of time until you get to shoot at someone and have fun. Politics and metagaming are also nice.

 

So how can we fix this? My humble opinion:

 

- Leaving the dock

 

There should be an area or a brief amount of time within each port where wind doesn't affect you and you can thrust at a fixed amount of speed to leave the port. Once a bit far from the coast you get back to it. And before bitching about how this is unrealistic, we have a rotating wind server wide because that was the less shitty way found to deal with winds until something better comes up. It's fine, but if i want to move my ship hugging the coast to the next port i would like to not have to wait half an hour to have the chance and then wait again to go back.

 

- World battles

 

Leave the "swords" that indicate instance open for everyone, with some kind of battle rating check maybe. Let's give a sort of protection for newbies. For example, this would only happen for frigate missions and up or within a distance from the coast (easier missions would spawn closer or something to prevent this). 

 

Let's say i am on the ship shooting at stuff in my Pavel on my own without back up. Huge error no? I will be a juicy target and someone will come to piss on my cheerios. But hey, if it is open you can also call for reinforcements. But why someone would risk their ship to help this greedy nerd that was shooting at stuff in a big ass ship and deserves to be sunk? Here is why: you should be rewarded for giving assistance. Enable a distress / emergency mechanism. Like an event or a mission. Nerd137 is in trouble! If you help him you get a nice chunk of XP/gold with the possibility of some juicy drops. 

 

In essence: give the players the opportunity to play with another players, and give them a meaningful experience for doing it. As it is now, you have to sit at the crosses until someone disengages and then be luck to catch the offender. Give us the chance to escalate a meaningless bad decision into something big epic. Give us the sense of being within a huge naval conflict. And make it worth it.

 

- Better NPC encounters.

 

I am sure AI will be AI in any game and in the end it is shooting against a boat that will execute a dance and you will fight him. Missions are a way to time gate your progress and teach you how to fight and make you have fun. But all of them resort to the same kind of tactics. In PvP (not sure now, forgive me if i'm wrong or please correct me) everything was about kitey stuff, removing masts to prevent him from going out and then capture or nuke him down. This doesn't ever happens in npc battles. They will ravish your crew by hit chance, and they will go to your hull. But you can end with one side totally down and 0 hits to your sails. This could be handicapped and specially in multi-ship encounters find that someone goes against your sails, or against your hull, or tries to rake your butt. In essence, make us experience what we will find in open world so that we are more ready to fight when it happens.

 

This is also being discussed since forever, the kind of missions and variety i am sure will change further down the road. So i won't mention it but it's obviously needed for variety sake.

 

- "Nearby Chat"

 

I am very chatty and i like to greet people. Enemies or friends, i don't care. But it's nice to say "ahoy" or to write a bad pun while traveling. I find a bit annoying to force me to write a private message. It would be nice to have some sort of regional chats maybe based on coordinates. This also would help to put groups together, find friends or fight foes. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mrdoomed]

I have returned after being months out. I got this game and i was super engaged. Then i reached the 3rd rate rank and it became a circlejerk around port battle snipping and the mission grind was super boring. I left and eventually most of my friends did too. And i had a blast, in some moments, because naval combat is awesome. And i want to play this game and get engaged again.

However, i see a few of things drawing me back, that have no easy solution.

If i have limited playtime let's say i log in and want to play. Oh no, the wind is against the direction i have to sail for all the missions i'm getting. And they are far because they are higher ranked. And my ships are slower. I can wait, or logoff. Or sail during 10 minutes till i arrive to the point, to fight the same battle to get a tiny amount of XP. It makes the grind punishing more than fun. And on this game having the capability of sailing a 1st rate doesn't mean you are going to go with your Santisima and be the king of the seas. So why delaying it with a rinse and repeat bottleneck of the same battle over and over? Also the AI will teach you to fight in a way that will get you destroyed in PVP. So it's not even useful in terms of combat. I still like to shoot at stuff, though. But players are always more interesting.

If i want to go PVP, Open World PVP will be mostly ganking and kiting at long range with frigates. I remember that we were all the time with trincos and rennomees (i don't know the current meta) and it all was about kiting a whale until it eventually died or gave up. It could last an annoying amount of time. And this of course would mean hunting him first with the weird tag mechanics. It will be a chasing game because of course the victim doesn't want to lose. He has very few chances or if anything, he will get our group in battle and call for reinforcements for when we leave it to have his revenge. Which is fine, but is again revolving around a particular mechanic to get the world done.

Of couse i still have the chance to do group battles and such, and that was what we ended doing. Because i logged in and oh, we have to craft a new ship in order to progress because of port battles. Okay. No hunt today. Oh, we need to capture 3rd rates for port battles. Rip.

The trend i see on this game is that you have a sense of wasting a huge amount of time until you get to shoot at someone and have fun. Politics and metagaming are also nice.

So how can we fix this? My humble opinion:

- Leaving the dock

There should be an area or a brief amount of time within each port where wind doesn't affect you and you can thrust at a fixed amount of speed to leave the port. Once a bit far from the coast you get back to it. And before bitching about how this is unrealistic, we have a rotating wind server wide because that was the less shitty way found to deal with winds until something better comes up. It's fine, but if i want to move my ship hugging the coast to the next port i would like to not have to wait half an hour to have the chance and then wait again to go back.

- World battles

Leave the "swords" that indicate instance open for everyone, with some kind of battle rating check maybe. Let's give a sort of protection for newbies. For example, this would only happen for frigate missions and up or within a distance from the coast (easier missions would spawn closer or something to prevent this).

Let's say i am on the ship shooting at stuff in my Pavel on my own without back up. Huge error no? I will be a juicy target and someone will come to piss on my cheerios. But hey, if it is open you can also call for reinforcements. But why someone would risk their ship to help this greedy nerd that was shooting at stuff in a big ass ship and deserves to be sunk? Here is why: you should be rewarded for giving assistance. Enable a distress / emergency mechanism. Like an event or a mission. Nerd137 is in trouble! If you help him you get a nice chunk of XP/gold with the possibility of some juicy drops.

In essence: give the players the opportunity to play with another players, and give them a meaningful experience for doing it. As it is now, you have to sit at the crosses until someone disengages and then be luck to catch the offender. Give us the chance to escalate a meaningless bad decision into something big epic. Give us the sense of being within a huge naval conflict. And make it worth it.

- Better NPC encounters.

I am sure AI will be AI in any game and in the end it is shooting against a boat that will execute a dance and you will fight him. Missions are a way to time gate your progress and teach you how to fight and make you have fun. But all of them resort to the same kind of tactics. In PvP (not sure now, forgive me if i'm wrong or please correct me) everything was about kitey stuff, removing masts to prevent him from going out and then capture or nuke him down. This doesn't ever happens in npc battles. They will ravish your crew by hit chance, and they will go to your hull. But you can end with one side totally down and 0 hits to your sails. This could be handicapped and specially in multi-ship encounters find that someone goes against your sails, or against your hull, or tries to rake your butt. In essence, make us experience what we will find in open world so that we are more ready to fight when it happens.

This is also being discussed since forever, the kind of missions and variety i am sure will change further down the road. So i won't mention it but it's obviously needed for variety sake.

- "Nearby Chat"

I am very chatty and i like to greet people. Enemies or friends, i don't care. But it's nice to say "ahoy" or to write a bad pun while traveling. I find a bit annoying to force me to write a private message. It would be nice to have some sort of regional chats maybe based on coordinates. This also would help to put groups together, find friends or fight foes.

I wont get involved with most of your suggestions exept the last one. Now while i completely agree with you on how nice chating would be i also think of all the death threats, rape threats, and other completely unhinged things many guys have typed to me so im nt sure it would work out.

I will say that i used to play aces high that had open chat within a range ( or used to way back when) and let me say there is not many things worse than hearing 4 or 5 mad 11 year olds all screaming at each other about what they are gonna do to each other.

Just wasnt for me so i would want an option for this to nt be able to be used unless the player ask for it to be enabled.

[admin]

we did not want to add ability to talk to enemies at all. Maybe we should remove it.. and add 9 standard age of sail curses, or shouts. Less reports to process more time to code. 

[Salty Dog.]

we did not want to add ability to talk to enemies at all. Maybe we should remove it.. and add 9 standard age of sail curses, or shouts. Less reports to process more time to code. 

awesome!  Can we also have a "the enemy Captain wiggles his bare pimpled arse in your general direction" curse? 

[Mrdoomed]

we did not want to add ability to talk to enemies at all. Maybe we should remove it.. and add 9 standard age of sail curses, or shouts. Less reports to process more time to code.

This would be nice . things from do you surrender or good fight and remove the ability for factions to speak outside of common ports.