What is this games intent?

[Jerome]

I admit, I am confused. The patches seem to see-saw between mechanics that encourage open world no-holds barred PvP and hand holding crutches for PvP.  

The biggest population drop that I can recall came with the first implementation of BR tagging rules, resulting in groups being split and people either having to wait out a fight or getting sucked into another one.  

Other, in my opinion, pvp killers included the evil twin reinforcements that meant you were punished for hunting. Tag a traders snow with a renomee, and poof he was joined by a renomee. It was worse if you had a large group... 

The social perk was hard to fathom unless the devs were favoring the econ and stay at home player over the pvper. It was very frustrating when our group literally sailed 45 minutes to find PvP (we are pirate hunters that used to roam 4-5 Surprises and renomees) to think the cards were stacked against us because we dared to hunt in enemy home waters... It always baffled me, where else would we go? We look for the highest concentration of enemy players.

To be clear, my group was a collection of aggressive pvpers and we attacked anyone we thought we had a chance at, including fights we were outgunned ot outnumbered in. Some of us had played other games together for years and we did quite well. Two points to make here. Rarely did the enemy ever try to fight even or close to even fights. When we were spotted they invariably called out a much larger and heavier force and we either had to move on or play cat and mouse. Second point, for all those looking for "fair" fights, what are the odds that any given player or group of players will randomly encounter their pvp match? Near impossible. Balanced or even fights should not be an expectation in the open world, as it is impossible to do without heavy-handed mechanics restricting players.

We never sailed out with the stated intent to "gank", we just organized so we could tackle groups and of course always hit targets of opportunity. Often we became the hunted as players organized to drive us off, sometimes we got caught. We always made a fight of it.  Now I pretty much sail alone, my pals logged in disgust a while ago.

Another baffling thing for me is players that argue against a mechanic (stern rakes) as "unrealistic" and then ask for "balance" in the same post.  Look, this is PvP. Invariably certain ships will come out as best for certain roles and certain tactics will also become best practice. If you need them, something else will fill their role at the cost of less variety. Adapt or die.

The biggest draw for me and I believe a lot of people was open world PvP with variety. We could hit fellow pirates (we did), and anything we found. I seek clarification, sometimes the development seems schizoid and I do believe the devs are listening to the wrong players.  I think the current population reflects that.

[The Spud]

I genuinly think the devs expected the last patch to turn out differently then the way it did. They probably didn't expect people would prefer "Winning" the RvR at the cost of PvP fun. The crafting was after many people showed concern about the ahistorical amount of SoL's in OW, as wel as the fact they probably wanted to give reason for basic, common, fine and MC to exist. Which turned out was an error of judgement too.

Making a niche game like this is prety much trial and error for the biggest part, there is no well writen guide "How to make a great Age of Sail game". Where anyone making an FPS game has plenty of examples to see what works and what doesn't work, up to the point maybe that in FPS games it has become hard to do anything that has never been done before.

Lets just see what next patches bring.

[Archaos]

I do think the Devs do try and cater to the requests of the players and that is why the mechanics swing so much. The problem is that you can not keep everybody happy.

At one stage the ganking in home waters got silly as you could not even step out of port in home waters than you got attacked. You may not have sailed there with the intention to gank but I bet you chose your targets carefully to ensure you had best chance of success and if the odds were stacked against you then you ran. I know from experience how frustrating it was trying to catch the raiders that came to the home waters around Jamaica. As you mention yourself  "my group was a collection of aggressive pvpers", and generally the people gathering to engage you would be a pick up group of varying abilities, thus they would have to rely on numbers.

I personally would not usually engage such players on an even basis as I know they had come prepared for such a battle, and then even if I did engage them I knew they had enough skill to usually escape if the battle was turning against them.

I do agree with your points to a certain extent, all battles should not be balanced even fights, but I do think the protection afforded by home waters should be better than open sea or close to foreign ports and I think that is the balance the Devs have to address. Bear in mind that if the game mechanics swing too much in favour of the aggressor and players end up bottled in at their home ports then they will stop playing and you will have even less PvP. The lowly trader needs to see some odds in his favour before he will make a trade run, if he knew each run would be unsuccessful then why bother doing the run.

[Vernon Merrill]

The problem is ALWAYS going to be trying to find a balance between the Simulator crowd and the WOWS crowd.  And as a result, there is always going to be two camps bitching about it on the forums, trying to pull the devs one way or the other.  IMO, the Devs should pick an end-game, lay out what they are thinking and develop it towards that.

Some, like myself, would prefer a more in-depth game, while others want nothing more than a return to sea-trials, and non-stop dueling.  

 

Neither is right or wrong, but they are definitely 2 different games.

[Jerome]

15 minutes ago, Archaos said:

I do think the Devs do try and cater to the requests of the players and that is why the mechanics swing so much. The problem is that you can not keep everybody happy.

At one stage the ganking in home waters got silly as you could not even step out of port in home waters than you got attacked. You may not have sailed there with the intention to gank but I bet you chose your targets carefully to ensure you had best chance of success and if the odds were stacked against you then you ran. I know from experience how frustrating it was trying to catch the raiders that came to the home waters around Jamaica. As you mention yourself  "my group was a collection of aggressive pvpers", and generally the people gathering to engage you would be a pick up group of varying abilities, thus they would have to rely on numbers.

I personally would not usually engage such players on an even basis as I know they had come prepared for such a battle, and then even if I did engage them I knew they had enough skill to usually escape if the battle was turning against them.

I do agree with your points to a certain extent, all battles should not be balanced even fights, but I do think the protection afforded by home waters should be better than open sea or close to foreign ports and I think that is the balance the Devs have to address. Bear in mind that if the game mechanics swing too much in favour of the aggressor and players end up bottled in at their home ports then they will stop playing and you will have even less PvP. The lowly trader needs to see some odds in his favour before he will make a trade run, if he knew each run would be unsuccessful then why bother doing the run.

The home fleets and shore batteries are a powerful ally for the home waters crowd.  Also, AI fleets can make it tough on a solo hunter.  So there is that. 

I just vehemently disagree with using mechanics to restrict pvp.  Mechanics mean it will be gamed, it will leave people out, and it will frustrate you.

Sure, being ganked can be frustrating.  But being hosed by the game developers is even more frustrating... and you can't go back out and hunt them down!

[admin]

Naval action was and is an experiment. We of course wanted to make a great game and focused on testing ideas (sometimes wrong ideas). If you have ever made a soup at home you will understand the problem. The recipe requires certain components and new components are not making the soup better. We definitely probably should have stopped earlier and focus on polish instead of adding new things. Adding new things broke the soup.

[Ned Loe]

12 minutes ago, admin said:

Naval action was and is an experiment. We of course wanted to make a great game and focused on testing ideas (sometimes wrong ideas). If you have ever made a soup at home you will understand the problem. The recipe requires certain components and new components are not making the soup better. We definitely probably should have stopped earlier and focus on polish instead of adding new things. Adding new things broke the soup.

All you have to do now is make Events rewarding and long lasting. Means some items will require long pvp/pve participation before they can be acquired. Addicting crowd to rewards/ achievements should put this game back on the track. Add junk loot on the top of that and see what happens 

Make visual unlock path for achievements/rewards based on kills and activity. Such system will make you golden. 

[ObiQuiet]

6 minutes ago, admin said:

Naval action was and is an experiment. We of course wanted to make a great game and focused on testing ideas (sometimes wrong ideas). If you have ever made a soup at home you will understand the problem. The recipe requires certain components and new components are not making the soup better. We definitely probably should have stopped earlier and focus on polish instead of adding new things. Adding new things broke the soup.

I appreciate your willingness and ability to try things out and learn what works.   Every so often take step back, look at what you've accomplished here and be encouraged!   Then, go forward again in an adjusted direction.

[Bart Smith]

23 minutes ago, sruPL said:

But this soup needs some more spices to taste better, it was raw before without good flavour and smell. Don't give up, don't blame the players for wanting more and keep up the good work. It's very good that you can admit to creating / adding wrong ideas or taking wrong ideas suggested by players. I have a big hope for this game and fully support it.

Like most people log in daily (and those who not as well) i hope. Maybe, just saying maybe developers tried listen players to often instead pick a own vision how game should look like. Eventually pick best (or at least best "on paper") players suggestions and add them on test server for those who interested to test them after release of game. But that just my thought...We got what we got but remember as well you never satisfy ALL players, not even majority i think. So keep good work as sruPL said - you got full support from a lot of must say "addicted to NA" players...

[The Spud]

I think some part is also to blame to the fact allot of resource/asset/outpost moving had to be done before players were back on track to craft ships etc. and that might have been disencouraging to some.

Some fine tuning and tinkering with mechanics will be all thats needed in my opinion.

The devs can use trial and error and any mechanic you add that doesn't interfere with RvR (like the events) are good additions. Its stuff you can do, but you don't have to. Also the admiralty shop might be very interesting for many players. Maybe some prestige ranks might also be a good way to keep players interested in the long run.

This to me is allready a good soup, keep working the recepy.

[Ted Nougat]

31 minutes ago, The Spud said:

Some fine tuning and tinkering with mechanics will be all thats needed in my opinion.

The problem is that they tried to force PVP, I think. They see lots of people sailing around trading, crafting, missioning, etc and think "Hmm, we could *force* them to go into enemy territory to get the stuff that makes the game fun for them... that will encourage pvp!" But this notion forgets that for every hardcore pvp player online at any given time there are ten other players who just want to sail around, trading, crafting, missioning, etc. And those people have left the game because they don't want to spend 5 hours sailing around to make a ship.

About 12 of us moved to PVP1 in June. The last guy left a few days after the last patch and hasn't been back since. I haven't logged in for ten days or so, because there's no point. I'm not going to spend the better part of my free time sailing in OW just to scratch the itch to fart around for a few minutes while dinner's cooking.

I was a hardcore 0.0 Eve player for 7 years; I even flew in a tournament one year and we nearly won. My player name's on CCP's statue in Iceland. I really, really like pvp. But sometimes I just want to chill for 30 minutes or whatever. That's no longer possible, unless I just like sitting in port listening to crickets. This notion of trying to force pvp and endless hours of OW sailing offers nothing for a casual player.

More is needed besides "tinkering with mechanics". They need to bring back stuff for the casual players, I think. The trouble is that, pun intended, that ship may have already sailed and those players are gone forever.

[Jerome]

As for PvP, there seems to be two conflicting philosophies.  Pure open world, unrestricted pvp, or arena style "fair" fights.  What is the point of open world hunting if the game forces balance in the fights?

When you suit up for pvp you have your taggers, chasers, heavies, etc.  But some of the mechanics force you to somehow find your opposite, matching, group in OW to have a fair fight.  At some point you have to ask, what is the point?  Arena fights or open world hunting.  I prefer the OW hunting and by the population drop I think I am in the majority, the majority that votes with their "feet" and not in the forums.  Bring back unrestricted warfare and see what happens.

[Mrdoomed]

1 hour ago, Jerome said:

As for PvP, there seems to be two conflicting philosophies.  Pure open world, unrestricted pvp, or arena style "fair" fights.  What is the point of open world hunting if the game forces balance in the fights?

When you suit up for pvp you have your taggers, chasers, heavies, etc.  But some of the mechanics force you to somehow find your opposite, matching, group in OW to have a fair fight.  At some point you have to ask, what is the point?  Arena fights or open world hunting.  I prefer the OW hunting and by the population drop I think I am in the majority, the majority that votes with their "feet" and not in the forums.  Bring back unrestricted warfare and see what happens.

My clan is there too. i was the last one still playing and hoping for even a small glimer of hope and even i haven't logged in , in a week .  Then I see the new " tow request " comming this next update which will effectively remove the last 3 or 4 players using the ow.

Thats pretty much it for me. my ow hunting views are not needed or wanted so until launch i wont be playing and unless it has a high population that forces a few people on ow i wont play then either. 

Ill still watch forums for updates to go back to a fun game rather than just another lobby areana game .  My breath i will not be holding lol.

[Grundgemunkey]

Quote

To be clear, my group was a collection of aggressive pvpers and we attacked anyone we thought we had a chance at, including fights we were outgunned ot outnumbered in. Some of us had played other games together for years and we did quite well. Two points to make here. Rarely did the enemy ever try to fight even or close to even fights. When we were spotted they invariably called out a much larger and heavier force and we either had to move on or play cat and mouse. Second point, for all those looking for "fair" fights, what are the odds that any given player or group of players will randomly encounter their pvp match? Near impossible. Balanced or even fights should not be an expectation in the open world, as it is impossible to do without heavy-handed mechanics restricting players.

i dont understand your points ...1st point you make is your intended victims never tried to fight you even if it was a fair fight or close to they always called in a larger heavier force

2nd point you say balanced or fair fights should not be an expectation

both points contradict themselves

unless the point your trying to make is that when you have the advantage all is ok ..but it becomes unfair when your victim gets help

 

[Mrdoomed]

3 hours ago, Grundgemunkey said:

i dont understand your points ...1st point you make is your intended victims never tried to fight you even if it was a fair fight or close to they always called in a larger heavier force

2nd point you say balanced or fair fights should not be an expectation

both points contradict themselves

unless the point your trying to make is that when you have the advantage all is ok ..but it becomes unfair when your victim gets help

 

I love how you cant read. 

[Grundgemunkey]

1 minute ago, Mrdoomed said:

I love how you cant read. 

i love you have taken the time to tell me

 

[Jerome]

My point is basically this.  Open world PvP should not have mechanics that attempt to artificially balance the fight.

The example of our opponents responding with overwhelming force is just to further the point, few people actually want a fair fight; they either want crushing superiority or they will not engage. I think it is just human nature.

[Justme]

Trading/missions/crafting have always been a no risk, no real reward for lazy FarmVille type players. There is 0 skill involved.

PVP adds risk and varied opponents ie fun and challenges. Hunting down others players in OW should be exciting a rewarding.

Sadly it's been obvious the devs are catering to the no skill easy mode crowd for some time.

[Sir. Cunningham]

Want more PvP and an increased player count?  Easy:

 

1) Increase all ship dura count by 1 (Yes that means 2 dura 1st rates, but don't worry few will want to sail them anyway)

2) Make ships easier to produce (no fine woods!)

3) Remove AI reinforcements (i.e. you have to either be close to a fleet or within capital protection to get any help)

4) Make PvP more rewarding with special PvP currency rewarded regardless of loss or win (great idea from the devs here!)

5) Remove ahistorical an very boring raking focused gameplay (i.e. adjust raking casualties to historical amount which incidentally also fits the game better due to the vastly higher agility of our ships ingame)

6) Introduce non-hostility generating/reducing missions only for new players (say up to mid rank) which instantly lock so these guys can easily learn the game mechanics and level up to an appropiate level for PvP'ing in peace if they feel the need.

With these 6 simple changes you'll guaranteed see a vast increase in player count as well as PvP.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Sir. Cunningham

[Cmdr RideZ]

On 11/22/2016 at 2:28 PM, Jerome said:

1. I admit, I am confused. The patches seem to see-saw between mechanics that encourage open world no-holds barred PvP and hand holding crutches for PvP.  

2. The biggest population drop that I can recall came with the first implementation of BR tagging rules, resulting in groups being split and people either having to wait out a fight or getting sucked into another one.  

3. Other, in my opinion, pvp killers included the evil twin reinforcements that meant you were punished for hunting. Tag a traders snow with a renomee, and poof he was joined by a renomee. It was worse if you had a large group... 

4. The social perk was hard to fathom unless the devs were favoring the econ and stay at home player over the pvper. It was very frustrating when our group literally sailed 45 minutes to find PvP (we are pirate hunters that used to roam 4-5 Surprises and renomees) to think the cards were stacked against us because we dared to hunt in enemy home waters... It always baffled me, where else would we go? We look for the highest concentration of enemy players.

5. To be clear, my group was a collection of aggressive pvpers and we attacked anyone we thought we had a chance at, including fights we were outgunned ot outnumbered in. Some of us had played other games together for years and we did quite well. Two points to make here. Rarely did the enemy ever try to fight even or close to even fights. When we were spotted they invariably called out a much larger and heavier force and we either had to move on or play cat and mouse. Second point, for all those looking for "fair" fights, what are the odds that any given player or group of players will randomly encounter their pvp match? Near impossible. Balanced or even fights should not be an expectation in the open world, as it is impossible to do without heavy-handed mechanics restricting players.

6. We never sailed out with the stated intent to "gank", we just organized so we could tackle groups and of course always hit targets of opportunity. Often we became the hunted as players organized to drive us off, sometimes we got caught. We always made a fight of it.  Now I pretty much sail alone, my pals logged in disgust a while ago.

7. Another baffling thing for me is players that argue against a mechanic (stern rakes) as "unrealistic" and then ask for "balance" in the same post.  Look, this is PvP. Invariably certain ships will come out as best for certain roles and certain tactics will also become best practice. If you need them, something else will fill their role at the cost of less variety. Adapt or die.

8. The biggest draw for me and I believe a lot of people was open world PvP with variety. We could hit fellow pirates (we did), and anything we found. I seek clarification, sometimes the development seems schizoid and I do believe the devs are listening to the wrong players.  I think the current population reflects that.

1. I think there were some development mistakes, which will fix the 1st one.

2. BR tagging is not the case here.  It is BR balancing, after the initial tag.

3. AI fleets is not cool, agreed

4. Everyone looks for high concentration.  Not sure how they are going to fix this.  Agreed.

5. The BR balancer should improve this.  Also short invisibility improves the moment when you exit from a battle.  Death Penalty is pretty high in this game, so people don't take that much risks.  It should be decreased, but I think someone somewhere decided that no.  So if the BR is 1:2, that is a good fight in NA and often you should take it.  atm. tho, there are surprise fleets that think that they are good players because of broken crew damage model.  A bit sad.

6. I am not sailing either.  The game is way too broken for that atm.  There is also nothing to test in this anymore, it is broken.  That's it for now.

7. This is a broken feature, and obviously so.  There is a thread dedicated for this.  But let me guess, you sail a 5th rate?

8. I really think they are listening the wrong people as well.  Almost like they were listening some guy(s) who have some specific playstyle or some specific obsession.  They should try to think what people want to play.  Yes, that is hard -> But that is what they should try to do.

[Sir. Cunningham]

What I meant with reinforcements was exactly that you have to be close to a fleet to get its help - i.e. reduce circle size. In other words I am talkng AI only.

As for the rest being carebear trash, well it is exactly that attitude which has seen most of the players leave. Too many new players quite simply don't get a chance to learn the game properly before they are preyed upon by seasoned players. The end results of that is rage quitting players that never come back.

In other words losing ships shouldn't be such a pain, which is solved by increasing dura and making them slightly easier to produce (no fine woods needed or at least a much higher drop of fine woods from production) that way people will be much more willing to engage in PvP.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Sir. Cunningham

[Sir. Cunningham]

7 minutes ago, Hodo said:

When I started this game I played on PVE server for the first 3 ranks, till I got an idea of how things worked.   Then I went to the PVP2 server.  I didn't lose a ship for a month, 3 more ranks.  This included PVP and PVE missions.   I learned early to make friends in nation, communicate, sail with people.   I didn't join a clan till 1 week after that.  

 

If you make them easier to produce and last longer, you just make them have no value and thus throw away ships. 

Well that is far from the experience many new players encounter these days. i.e. to them the progression curve seems infinitely steep.

 

Also let's not compare our own progression experience with how things are now, because things couldn't be more different. We had it easy compared to the poor chaps starting out now.

 

Also disposable ships is exactly what we need if we want to see PvP increase, and this is a method which will see it increase a lot by itself. In other words ships need to be "usable". If ships are both very hard to make and very easy to lose completely, well then PvP will die.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Sir. Cunningham

[Sir. Cunningham]

Giving SoLs one more dura isn't going to hurt anything. You could make them harder to make in conjunction, that way they are still very valuable and yet usable at the same time.

 

Also if you want the most common ships for fully ranked players to be schooners or brigs, well then you're certain to kill this game. Many people play this game to sail at the very least frigates, which incidentally were also the workhorses of the period.

Your last point about fine woods I can agree with though.

 

Edited November 25, 2016 by Sir. Cunningham

[Archaos]

42 minutes ago, Hodo said:

When I started this game I played on PVE server for the first 3 ranks, till I got an idea of how things worked.   Then I went to the PVP2 server.  I didn't lose a ship for a month, 3 more ranks.  This included PVP and PVE missions.   I learned early to make friends in nation, communicate, sail with people.   I didn't join a clan till 1 week after that.  

 

If you make them easier to produce and last longer, you just make them have no value and thus throw away ships. 

The game now is very different from when you started. When I started last year I very quickly had to move away from the KPR starting area because you couldn't move for other starting players and players jumping into your missions and stealing your kills, I moved all the way across the map and set up in English Harbour till the Swedes took it and then I moved to Plymouth freetown. There I could happily do missions and raid AI traders with little interference, in fact I leveled most of my crafting from gear captured from ai traders. I had a general understanding with a lot of Swedes in the area that I was just there for the AI traders and not to gank their players and for the main part they left me alone.

I could not imagine doing this now as the area outside KPR is almost constantly camped by pirates or other nations going after any target possible and if you operate out of any freeport in enemy waters people will actively hunt you. It is a very different game now so it is not of benefit to use those experiences in the current game setup.

Regarding the ships durability and ease to make I think you have to strike the right balance, if they are too easy to get then they have no meaning but if they are too difficult to get people will not risk them.

[Slamz]

On 11/22/2016 at 10:25 AM, admin said:

Adding new things broke the soup.

I dunno. The biggest change to my eye over the last year has been to the war mechanics.

That absolutely had to be done. Before it was like soup where instead of a good chicken stock or beef stock, you just had a lump of ingredients in a dry pot. Not much going on in there. Hard to even call it a soup.

Good war mechanics is what drives everything else. It's the broth for your soup. Maybe this is what you mean by focusing on the polish -- I hope it's not what you mean when you say new things broke the soup. The mechanics of the war have always been the most important part. Without that, there's no movement, no soup, no game.