Patch 9.97 - Events, minor crafting changes and other things

[Busterbloodvessel]

Another "Update" this morning 8th Dec. Is this the Advent Calendar patch sequence.

Buster

Unwraps his chocy. 

[Fenris]

20 hours ago, koltes said:

Eventually people will learn to sail with convoys. Or learn to avoid.
In EVE there are gate campers been killing people at bottlenecks for 10 years.
Didnt destroy the game me thinking

You play too much EVE and you think that EVE mechanics can be applied in this game. Even your profile picture shows it. I can only hope nobody in charge is considering your propositions.

[Koltes]

17 minutes ago, Fenris said:

You play too much EVE and you think that EVE mechanics can be applied in this game. Even your profile picture shows it. I can only hope nobody in charge is considering your propositions.

1. I do not play EVE.
2. I haven't played EVE for over 4 years.
3. Pure EVE mechanics cannot be applied in this game.
4. Paying attention to some of the EVE mechanics and its experience that made that game oldest survived OW MMO title is totally common sense.
5. 99% of your comment is based on assumption.
6. I have gone through your comments on this forum and got an idea of your view on the game
7. Fear not. We will work on a great mechanics of hybrid PVE/PVP server were you will never have to fear of being ganged yet you will have an option to participate in PVP.
8. Thank you for your valuable input

Edited December 8, 2016 by koltes

[Fenris]

7 minutes ago, koltes said:

1. I do not play EVE.
2. I haven't played EVE for over 4 years.
3. Pure EVE mechanics cannot be applied in this game.
4. Paying attention to some of the EVE mechanics and its experience that made that game oldest survived OW MMO title is totally common sense.
5. 99% of your comment is based on assumption.
6. I have gone through your comments on this forum and got an idea of your view on the game
7. Fear not. We will work on a great mechanics of hybrid PVE/PVP server were you will never have to fear of being ganged yet you will have an option to participate in PVP.
8. Thank you for your valuable input

Been gone through your comments too..Almost every 2nd one has a "in EVE...."

You have no idea what am i thinking about this game.

I dont care about EVE mechanics.

Hybrid PVE/PVP area exists.Never been there, i guess it was your idea, because " in EVE..."...

My input doesnt matter at all. And i hope yours too.

[Rhodry Heidenrich]

Not to be "that guy" and stray too far off topic, but I'm gonna do it for a moment anyway..

Eve is by no means the "oldest surviving OW MMO". Not by a long f'in shot.

Anyway,

I know this patch hasn't enticed me enough to come back to the game. I logged in to sell what fine woods I had on hand, collect and sell the redeemable ships (I need another Endymion or Indefatigable like I need a .44 slug in the head), then logged out again. I'm going to keep watching the forums for more feedback/commentary on the patch to see if things improve enough for me to want to get back into playing/testing. The main course of this patch happens to be things I have zero interest in (Events).



 

[Koltes]

24 minutes ago, Rhodry Heidenrich said:

Eve is by no means the "oldest surviving OW MMO". Not by a long f'in shot

Probably not, but when I see server population status I struggle to name one game that would match the same after 10 years

Edited December 9, 2016 by koltes

[Koltes]

2 minutes ago, Hodo said:

I can name several games that have been around for 10 or more years.

Ultima Online still around and still seeing 1k plus online on some of the most obscure shards.  

WWII online over ten years hell 15 years.

SWG is still going in a emu form and having 2k or more numbers.  12+ years 

Work of Warcraft nearly 15 or 16 years. 

And the list goes on.

Just saying.

1. Read what I replied again lol
2. Pay attention to screenshot. Specifically server population

 

Edited December 9, 2016 by koltes

[Wesreidau]

Look, EVE is a great example of an MMO, and so is Puzzle Pirates. His point is not invalid because its a thought drawn from the EVE experience, just as your thoughts aren't invalid for being drawn from ... wherever. Ideas can stand on merit without having to attack the source.

[Rhodry Heidenrich]

Surviving= Still around. Games like Ultima Online are old battle-axes that helped pioneer the genre, and pulled in a lot of players back when MMO gaming was in its infancy, on top of being pretty "niche". NA could learn some things from UO insomuch as a true open world sandbox game doesn't need "events" and bullshit "exclusive/rare" content in order to be entertaining. Sure, UO has some of that crap now, but back when it launched in 1997 it was a pure, unfiltered, mostly cat-shit free sandbox. Very popular, and very fun because a huge chunk of the content was the players themselves.

Population numbers are a different animal. Especially now when the MMO market is sickeningly flooded with a bunch of clone games, with very few that really stand out from the crowd. Even worse when you enter the sandbox/open world corner of the market which really is a small slice of the pie (26k players online in EVE is small to more popular, but not as good, games like World of Borecraft). Eve's a good game. I enjoyed my time playing it, and I agree that it has some elements worth copying.

NA Currently has some pretty crap population numbers, for a variety of reasons. Not ringing the death's knell here, because it's an early access game still in development. What's to be seen is what happens when the game goes into "release" status with no more wipes on the horizon. That will be the test of whether or not this game has any staying power. I hope it does, because it's a game that's right up my alley. I want it to succeed and thrive in a market where games such as this often don't. The past couple of patches I think have focused on the wrong things, and as others have said: Have been way to big in scope and add too much to the plate at a time. Problem being that it's muddied the waters a bit when it comes to pointing directly at what's doing the most damage to the player base.

This patch just didn't do it for me, as I said before. Trying to force interactions by funneling players into the same areas every few hours is just a small bandaid on a multifaceted problem. The removal of fine woods was a good move because it was making shipbuilding tedious to the point that it exacerbated the issue of players being too scared to lose precious "gold" ships. Fixing "hostility bombs" was something which should have been hot-fixed weeks ago. There's still tuning to be done with the hostility system, and quite frankly one of the things that should be done is completely removing any PvE element from Conquest. Conquest is NOT PvE, it's PvP flat out. I normally try to not crap too hard on players who like to primarily PvE, but in this case I will. You want access to the regional goodies, put your big captain pants on and go fight other players. Even worse when PvE grinding is/was more efficient for moving hostility up than PvP.  I knew there was something wrong with the "Hostility System" when players in my clan on PvP2 who normally avoided PvE at all costs were running missions to grind hostility up.

I'm rambling. Back to mostly lurking to watch game development as I wait for the cookie that will pique my interest enough to get me to play more.

[Mrdoomed]

I wont even begin to start in on where things went wrong but weve all seen 2 huge population crashes and what preceded them.

Like you im just lurking now praying NA does a complete 180° and then HOPE enough of us evil niche gamers come back and then lands its share of the open world sandbox hardcore game.

As it stands now I think f2p and cross platform is the only gimmer of a chance this once great game has at a launch.

500 people on between 3 servers cant sustain a game i dont think. i really hope i will again find a reason to play some day.

 

Happy hunting captains.

[Zoky]

3 hours ago, Mrdoomed said:

As it stands now I think f2p and cross platform is the only gimmer of a chance this once great game has at a launch.

 

That would be final nail in coffin for this game. To go f2p you need to casualize this game and then you will lose even those 500 people still playing, and while it might bring new players at first (12-year old screaming kinds) numbers will plummet after a month because this game compared to WoT, WoWS, WT etc. will be to hardcore for casuals and to casual for hardcore gamers. Only way I see that devs can save NA is to decide what they want. Do they want this to be successful nishe game or failed WoWS clone

[stormridersp]

I have to agree with the EVE guy. Some mechanics need to be introduced to NA from other games. Right now its completely non-sense, huge AI fleets that dont attack anyone everywhere, non-sense combat missions, infinite trading profit and so on.

OW needs to have a tactical-strategical game mechanic but without loosing the persistence, otherwise itd be an end-game needing complete resets every 4 weeks or so.

 

 

[Sir Texas Sir]

7 hours ago, Mrdoomed said:

I wont even begin to start in on where things went wrong but weve all seen 2 huge population crashes and what preceded them.

Like you im just lurking now praying NA does a complete 180° and then HOPE enough of us evil niche gamers come back and then lands its share of the open world sandbox hardcore game.

As it stands now I think f2p and cross platform is the only gimmer of a chance this once great game has at a launch.

500 people on between 3 servers cant sustain a game i dont think. i really hope i will again find a reason to play some day.

 

Happy hunting captains.

Maybe like give pirates some proper mechanics so we aren't just another nation with no alliances.   That would be one way to prob get some folks back.  

[Zoky]

Not exactly, biggest number was 63303 at same time, so this 27k is not that bad, and we don't know if it was at prime time or slow part of day

Edited December 9, 2016 by Zoky

[Zoky]

Yes im talking about eve and that screenshot is from eve launcher. EvE record for max players online was set in 2013 as 63.303 players online. In 2016 record was 50k+

[Zoky]

You are probably mixing sub numbers with max online numbers

[Anne Wildcat]

I was on PvP1 last night, patrolling Jamaica by my lonesome. Saw three players there, which is more than usual.  An indianman with a renomee fleet, a renomee with a renomee (and something else) fleet and a traders brig.  Would have tried to take the traders brig if he hadn't run to one of the other two. I would really really like to see the ability of having an AI fleet being tied to an officer perk. Today I'm going to hunt where I saw many traders the other day when I was in a trader. ?

[Koltes]

 

5 hours ago, Zoky said:

Not exactly, biggest number was 63303 at same time, so this 27k is not that bad, and we don't know if it was at prime time or slow part of day

^ This.

 

5 hours ago, Hodo said:

EVE, at launch had over 5x those numbers.  At one point EVE boasted a 250k game population.  Now those numbers are down in the 20k range.  Am I to assume those are great seeing as they are one fifth of what they once were?   

If you are going to post numbers, be sure to know all the numbers.

@Hodo I gave up arguing with you long time ago.
Last time I played EVE was about 4 years ago and server population was getting to about 30k people. That is people online playing the game on one server.
Screen I posted was from yesterday figure. 30k 4 years ago. 26k today. I don't know what you are talking about and were did you get 250k if server can't even handle that much.

..."If you are going to post numbers, be sure to know all the numbers."

[Koltes]

6 minutes ago, Hodo said:

Eve Online: 500k subscribers and what CCP learnt along the way. "Many of the greatest inventions in Eve Online have been people breaking the game." Spaceship MMO Eve Online is more popular than ever; for the first time in its nearly 10-year existence, the game has boosted past 500,000 paying subscribers.  -Eurogamer

I dont know what you are saying

[Paulus de Boskabouter]

Eeeaa, captains and devs. These words have been spoken before but im gonna speak them one last time. What you've doen with the patch is great - good step in the right direciton (for me atleast). I spoke with alot of players who really enjoy the pve events and try to get those chests, and also with alot of players who build good niagaras or deep water boats to compete. Im sure the removale of fine woods and the chests rewards for pvp/pve had something to do with these changes. All great

What you see now is the lacking of good and massive pvp. This place has to be filled with PB and screening PB battles. Its a final but very very imprtant step to finish this game imho. We tried flags, we tried hostility. I think both systems are not desirable. Maybe we can think of a different system??

Based on server population (yes we have alot of different ideas about how the game should be) ---Easy accesable, peak hours, not encouraged by PVE, diversity of ships, no weird screening or log off thingy. And more....wke should come up with something else (really hope land in pb will change this) But for innitating the P:

Dont want to be a downer so i come up with a suggestion:

Let nation be allowed to set timers (instead of 2 hours  - 4-6 hours)
Hostility is raised mainly trough pvp across the map 
Give points based on pvp - and let the attackers choose which region he wants to attack based on this point
Pve helps a lil 
So bassicaly you have hostility points against a Nation -  based on these point you can choose which region you want to PB in the set timers.


+

If you raised this hostility to100% --- you are able to buy a flag, you have to sail this flag to start the PB.

 

[Koltes]

2 minutes ago, Paulus de Boskabouter said:

Eeeaa, captains and devs. These words have been spoken before but im gonna speak them one last time. What you've doen with the patch is great - good step in the right direciton (for me atleast). I spoke with alot of players who really enjoy the pve events and try to get those chests, and also with alot of players who build good niagaras or deep water boats to compete. Im sure the removale of fine woods and the chests rewards for pvp/pve had something to do with these changes. All great

What you see now is the lacking of good and massive pvp. This place has to be filled with PB and screening PB battles. Its a final but very very imprtant step to finish this game imho. We tried flags, we tried hostility. I think both systems are not desirable. Maybe we can think of a different system??

Based on server population (yes we have alot of different ideas about how the game should be) ---Easy accesable, peak hours, not encouraged by PVE, diversity of ships, no weird screening or log off thingy. And more....wke should come up with something else (really hope land in pb will change this) But for innitating the P:

Dont want to be a downer so i come up with a suggestion:

Let nation be allowed to set timers (instead of 2 hours  - 4-6 hours)
Hostility is raised mainly trough pvp across the map 
Give points based on pvp - and let the attackers choose which region he wants to attack based on this point
Pve helps a lil 
So bassicaly you have hostility points against a Nation -  based on these point you can choose which region you want to PB in the set timers.


+

If you raised this hostility to100% --- you are able to buy a flag, you have to sail this flag to start the PB.

 

Hostility needs to go.
It is ridicules that on PVP server in order to even trigger a port battle you have to grind enormous amount of PVE. That is why most of my clan members quit.

 

[Guest]

7 hours ago, koltes said:

Hostility needs to go.
It is ridicules that on PVP server in order to even trigger a port battle you have to grind enormous amount of PVE. That is why most of my clan members quit.

 

It isn't that bad.. it does take a large group to do it quickly, but it took about 20 brits roughly 1.5 - 2 hours to get full hostility and trigger a pb. Most groups only ended up doing 2-3 missions. It's true the French were slow to respond, but still the system feels good. I don't think regions should be easy to flip, it should take some organization and effort.

[Sir Texas Sir]

As much as I hate the mission grind thing I think Hostility is needed, but the problem is trying to find this fleet that is causeing the hostility and the grind.  Blockaiding needs ot be added as much as I know it will hurt the small nations, but it tells you exactly where they are cause you can see them.  Hostility missions need to stay open mroe then 5 mins.  I didn't even know this got bumped down and now we know why we couldn't find most these missions half the time when they are grinding up a region is cause they close way to soon before you can get there and join them.  Could fly right past the spot and never find them with how big the regions are.  There should be a hot spot marker. If the missions is being donw around one said port over another that port should bink/turn red as a hot spot so you know about where they are at.   The limit on War Supplies is a right direction as those are being abused by larger nations so they don't even have to grind.  They just drop them off and half way there.   It's still  early on these new mechanics and they need a lot more tweeking.

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 minute ago, Wraith said:

I still want to try a system where all active battles are marked with X's on the map that quickly fade out over time (15 minutes or so). With server populations so low this would greatly increase hot spot evolution and concentration of PvP without having to rely on arena events. Gamey, yes.. but think of it as a system of rumor and news carried by AI from port to port.

Just do like after a port battle and a region is capture.  How it switches color of the past owner and new one until server reset.  Though pick a diffrent color.  I would say something bright that isn't red cause brits are red.

[Vernon Merrill]

Again, I thought that the whole reason to give regions/ports actual meaning.  I remember reading somewhere about it creating "front lines" so that it would be easier to find PvP.  By making it so that you don't even need to perform any PvP to increase hostility, that thought becomes useless..... it ridiculous to me that you can grind/farm AI to trigger a Port battle.  

I wish the whole "Port battles are the be all/end all of this game" crowd would realize that not everyone is playing the game based on trying to get into a 25v25 with floating bathtubs.  

They may be more interesting in the future if land gets in and you need a more varied fleet, but right now it's dull AF to me.