Eliminate player hauling - a PvP-driven idea

['Sharpe]

Currently the OW is an extremely inefficient lobby for finding PvP battles. In an ideal state, the open world would represent the kind of immersion we all hope for, while allowing players to actually find each other and have a good chance of PvP battle. I am not advocating for a lobby style game, I actually quite like the OW. This proposal aims to simply make the OW a place where more predictable action can be found, and (importantly) that the action actually feels rooted in the larger war struggle.

The proposal:

• All cargo hauling is done by AI fleets.
• Cargo convoys are set by the gameworld automatically to occur fairly frequently between two ports near to a front line.
• Additionally, players can schedule custom convoys.
• Each convoy launch will be known in advance (exact time) by the launching nation and allies. All other nations will know that it will launch between a given 10 minute period, but not the exact time.
• This is important. Cargo convoys only launch if at least one player has signed on as an escort. There is no way to transport cargo between ports unless at least one player is escorting a merchant AI convoy. If at least one player does not sign on to escort the convoy, it will not leave port and the goods will not be transported until it can be re-scheduled.
• Merchant AI convoys on the OW are slow and vulnerable. 75% of player speed.

This would have the following ramifications:

• Funneling players (escorts and interceptors) into known places and times.
• Encouraging use for lineships on OW. (Valuable convoy? Now is a great time for you and your friends to use your Pavels and Bucs)
• PvP-seekers will be helping the economy by signing on to escort convoys, and crafters are helping generate PvP. It's symbiotic.
• If a nation does not escort its convoys, their economy will fail to function. It's that simple. Escorts MUST be done. And PvP will occur.

 

[Magnum]

Why the within a 10 min period? The others countries (interceptors) should only know about the convoy if they see it launch - encouraging them to watch enemy ports = even more PvP.

Well, more PvP if the cloaking devices are rescinded - cloaking is the main killer of fun PvP - so so many are just hit and run ambush predators now and they run run run if an even close to even fight shows up. Without cloaking they would have to be serious about PvP or just stay away.

[Fenris]

4 hours ago, 'Sharpe said:

Currently the OW is an extremely inefficient lobby for finding PvP battles. In an ideal state, the open world would represent the kind of immersion we all hope for, while allowing players to actually find each other and have a good chance of PvP battle. I am not advocating for a lobby style game, I actually quite like the OW. This proposal aims to simply make the OW a place where more predictable action can be found, and (importantly) that the action actually feels rooted in the larger war struggle.

The proposal:

• All cargo hauling is done by AI fleets.
• Cargo convoys are set by the gameworld automatically to occur fairly frequently between two ports near to a front line.
• Additionally, players can schedule custom convoys.
• Each convoy launch will be known in advance (exact time) by the launching nation and allies. All other nations will know that it will launch between a given 10 minute period, but not the exact time.
• This is important. Cargo convoys only launch if at least one player has signed on as an escort. There is no way to transport cargo between ports unless at least one player is escorting a merchant AI convoy. If at least one player does not sign on to escort the convoy, it will not leave port and the goods will not be transported until it can be re-scheduled.
• Merchant AI convoys on the OW are slow and vulnerable. 75% of player speed.

This would have the following ramifications:

• Funneling players (escorts and interceptors) into known places and times.
• Encouraging use for lineships on OW. (Valuable convoy? Now is a great time for you and your friends to use your Pavels and Bucs)
• PvP-seekers will be helping the economy by signing on to escort convoys, and crafters are helping generate PvP. It's symbiotic.
• If a nation does not escort its convoys, their economy will fail to function. It's that simple. Escorts MUST be done. And PvP will occur.

 

If you dont find any PvP on OW,you just need to enter SMALL BATTLES, and find some players in GLOBAL chat.

"Predictable" action ? You mean enemy should warn you where he is so you can attack them?

PvP on OW is never "predictable", you are mostly disadvantaged, or have advantage.Thats the whole point of it.

[Armored_Sheep]

I like the idea that there is some meaningfull activity in OW that is somehow anounced to other players so the can navigate in the map and join. I like to have reasonable info in game interface about possible enemy and friendly activity. reading chat and spying is not that effective.

[Sven Silberbart]

This suppose remembers be to the supply-tranports in Guild Wars 2. I loved to sto or escort the NPCs.

That was working good to make a PvP Action Spot

[Todbringer]

meh, they should just speed us more in OW and allow us to queue for large and small battles anywhere.

[Havelock]

I like your overall idea. What you basically do is instead of having a player controled trader being escorted by an AI warship, the player escorts the AI trader in his warship. However i think there are some things you havent thougt about yet (at least you didnt write it down :P):

 

1. Convoys should be only possible between regional capitals, that makes forming up a convoy easier (Free Towns too ofc).

2. How does a convoy with a lot of ressorces work? There should be a cap of lets say 10 Indiamans. They could be escorted by max 20 ships, so interceptors can have max 20 ships too (to meet our 50 battle cap).

3. How do the traders get out of battle? Battle timer would make it too easy. I think all (alive) traders should automatically leave on 'Battle Over'. Sink traders to destroy, capture them to earn the cargo. Eg when there are 5 traders, for every trader sunk/captured 20% of every players cargo is destroyed/captured.

4. Too much convoys would overstress the server (this has been brought up by admin on this type of suggestions multiple times). We could just remove all other AI warship fleets of course. Alternatively we need to limit the number of active convoys. Maybe a maximum of 20 Indiamans per nation? And make convoys only possible at certain times? Eg Britain can start convoys at 12.00, France at 12.20, Sweden at 12.40 and so on. One loop would be 2h40m then.

5. What if a haul is 3h long? Right now Freetown delivery reduces sailing time needed, but if we kept them convoys between Free Towns and Capitals would be too short. Maybe we could plan staggered convoys for long hauls? First convoy stage to a Free Town, second one will start at the same time as the first stage on the following day.

6. What keeps the interceptor from infinitely tagging the convoy? I suggest that the system automatically calculates the time needed for the convoy to arrive at its destination. Lets say the ETA is 2h and you get tagged after 10min. The battle now runs the full 1h30m, and when it ends the convoy should spawn where it would be after 1h40m. Interceptor should spawn in closest available port (assuming he sailed there after battle). Problem: could be abused by letting an alt attack the fleet and wait in battle (but still a better solution than endless tagging imho).

7. Make everybody with goods or ships in the convoy vote for a convoy leader, who can edit the convoys route. Make use of friendly controlled areas!

8. We could reintroduce the Ship's report letters to let players know where convoys are. After a convoy starts, the next player finishing a battle will receive a letter with detailed info about the convoy (numbers of tradeships, departure port, direction of destination port). Work togther with your Nation and allies to intercept it!

['Sharpe]

On 12/3/2016 at 2:26 AM, Fenris said:

If you dont find any PvP on OW,you just need to enter SMALL BATTLES, and find some players in GLOBAL chat.

"Predictable" action ? You mean enemy should warn you where he is so you can attack them?

PvP on OW is never "predictable", you are mostly disadvantaged, or have advantage.Thats the whole point of it.

Small battles, challenges in global chat. These are traits of a lobby style game. If these are the best ways to find action, it's no longer an OW PvP game.

As I stated this proposal is to encourage PvP within the operational confines of an OW-style game.

I also think you are confounding "predictable" with "balanced." Predictable in this case means I can read the list of convoy routes that are scheduled and know I have a good chance of encountering other players along that route. I say 'good chance' because it's not a 100% guarantee , as not all convoys scheduled will actually launch. Keeps some sense of anticipation/dynamism.

There will still be disadvantaged battles and advantaged battles.

['Sharpe]

On 12/3/2016 at 3:49 PM, Havelock said:

I like your overall idea. What you basically do is instead of having a player controled trader being escorted by an AI warship, the player escorts the AI trader in his warship. However i think there are some things you havent thougt about yet (at least you didnt write it down :P):

 

1. Convoys should be only possible between regional capitals, that makes forming up a convoy easier (Free Towns too ofc).
   The challenge with this could be distance. But yes some restriction on embarkation & destination ports could work well.

2. How does a convoy with a lot of ressorces work? There should be a cap of lets say 10 Indiamans. They could be escorted by max 20 ships, so interceptors can have max 20 ships too (to meet our 50 battle cap).
   Sounds about right.

3. How do the traders get out of battle? Battle timer would make it too easy. I think all (alive) traders should automatically leave on 'Battle Over'. Sink traders to destroy, capture them to earn the cargo. Eg when there are 5 traders, for every trader sunk/captured 20% of every players cargo is destroyed/captured.
   I'm not sure exit timers need to change. Keeping the Indiamen tagged is part of the action.

4. Too much convoys would overstress the server (this has been brought up by admin on this type of suggestions multiple times). We could just remove all other AI warship fleets of course. Alternatively we need to limit the number of active convoys. Maybe a maximum of 20 Indiamans per nation? And make convoys only possible at certain times? Eg Britain can start convoys at 12.00, France at 12.20, Sweden at 12.40 and so on. One loop would be 2h40m then.
   Each scheduled convoy only launches if it has a signed-up player escort that will spawn alongside it on the OW. So I can't imagine this would cause overload problems the same way that other AI convoy proposals have suggested. In this proposal the limiting factor is the willingness and availability of players to sign up to escort. And each time a player escorts a fleet, it's likely that they would have been doing that trade run themselves in a trader ship pre-this idea, so that removes that server load. Overall stress on server due to additional NPCs would seem to be pretty small.

5. What if a haul is 3h long? Right now Freetown delivery reduces sailing time needed, but if we kept them convoys between Free Towns and Capitals would be too short. Maybe we could plan staggered convoys for long hauls? First convoy stage to a Free Town, second one will start at the same time as the first stage on the following day.
   I like staggered hauls...it also gets people exploring more of the world than their specific niches.

6. What keeps the interceptor from infinitely tagging the convoy? I suggest that the system automatically calculates the time needed for the convoy to arrive at its destination. Lets say the ETA is 2h and you get tagged after 10min. The battle now runs the full 1h30m, and when it ends the convoy should spawn where it would be after 1h40m. Interceptor should spawn in closest available port (assuming he sailed there after battle). Problem: could be abused by letting an alt attack the fleet and wait in battle (but still a better solution than endless tagging imho).
   Good point about the tagging!

7. Make everybody with goods or ships in the convoy vote for a convoy leader, who can edit the convoys route. Make use of friendly controlled areas!

8. We could reintroduce the Ship's report letters to let players know where convoys are. After a convoy starts, the next player finishing a battle will receive a letter with detailed info about the convoy (numbers of tradeships, departure port, direction of destination port). Work togther with your Nation and allies to intercept it!
   I like the idea about Ships Report Letters being the source for gaining intel about convoys - or maybe they provide a bit more intel than the standard map will show you. As long as they are fairly common enough that the information can be useful.

Great points Havelock! No doubt there would be details like these to be ironed out. I put some thoughts inline.

[Tinbum]

I was thinking about this sort of thing myself over the weekend, but with a slightly different twist.

 

Instead of making it an "event" or sorts, we utilise all the AI traders currently in the game. Either using the free port delivery system, or opening the option to all ports, when you "send a delivery" that delivery is placed onto an AI trader, and is moved via OW to its destination, of course at a price to the trader captain plus any extra gold if you pay for that AI trader to be fleeted with an AI escort. This will make the AI traders more at risk of raids by rival nation players. So these traders/trade lanes will need defending from these enemy raids generating more PvP.

Raiding enemy trade lanes could have a significant impact on other nations economy, and will also push people out to defend their goods being transported.