Abandon Durability; Sunk Ships Become Hulks, Overhauled with LH and Mats

[Wesreidau]

Without mods, but hulk/overhaul permanent ships each ship you buy can have its own experience and upgrade selections.

I buy two Privateers. One privateer I sail a lot, the other I don't sail at all. I can have all sorts of mods unlocked on the privateer I sailed a lot. The privateer I don't sail is stuck with grey mods.

I buy two privateers and sail both about equally. One privateer I mod out for gunnery. The other privateer I mod out for boarding.

These improvements endure when my ship is sunk and hulked, and I get them back when they overhaul. I become very invested in a given ship. Players attached to their pixels are players who log back in to the game

[Rick_Astley]

Well we see the crafters name when you buy a crafted ship.

Rules could be, crafted ships only not redeemed ones or ship chests, can be repaired and only by the player who has crafted the ship.

"What if they stopped playing?" Simples as mentioned previously a ship crafter who has the BP and of craft level to repair the ship for a premium rate.

Example.. if a level 40 crafter has the Pavel BP he cannot repair an exceptional Pavel and vice versa with other corresponding ships.

This will keep the crafters busy as they can also receive payments for repairing ships or like most clans have ship builders, then clans can allocate there own repair rules.

Edited March 11, 2017 by Rick Astley
iPhone autocorrect

[Kesxex Rofux]

Turning what is intended to be a replaceable item into a permanent fixture happened in Dark Ages of Camelot with the Atlantis expansion. And this turned a vibrant market into a 10% ghost town for crafters.

Take the upgrades out as installable mods and a ship just becomes a ship.
No need to be attached as ships can and will be replaced.

Main problem is not pixels but the darn permanent and detachable upgrades that cost sometimes double (or more) as much as the ship. The loss of those hurts more than any 1 dura ship.

 

[Wesreidau]

No matter who I buy the ship from, anyone should be able to overhaul it, even me.

The specifics of what you describe in DAOC matter; did a replaceable item become a permanent item with no repair process that involved crafters? Were the bulk of crafters geared up to make these items and left in the lurch when a mechanic changed? If hulking is in at launch, many moderately-interested crafters won't take to the shipbuilding line and instead seek out other economic niches. That 10% ghost town might have been just right if 90% of the crafters found something else to do with their time. Rum consumption can use labor hours, as can producing overhaul contracts and shipbuilding materials for overhauls and new ships. The same amount of materials can go into an overhaul as will a 1 dura build. I don't see the difference except that each rebuild will have the bonuses I want and not require hunting down a player crafter to do it.

Ships are the only tangible avatar we have in the game. I don't see how making them "just a ship" helps engage the disengage player.

[Koltes]

20 hours ago, Wesreidau said:

Ships are the only tangible avatar we have in the game. I don't see how making them "just a ship" helps engage the disengage player.

Because hardcore PVP players dont care. They play to PVP and risk of loosing ship while fight for high reward prize is what makes them happy. PVP player feels better then his assets moving and everything he has is fight capable and that he uses everything in combat etc. Our assets, gold, ships for us are means to only provide PVP.

Carebears playing to accumulate assets. They feel better when their aasets growing. They dont want to loose them. At some stage they decide WHICH assets or ships they want to spend on PVP. They sort of included them to budget of staff they are prepared to lose to give PVP a try. When they loose a ship that they have not put aside for PVP they feel sad, hence why they get attached to their ships and want more duras just to prolong their ships life.

Interesting moment that MOST carebears will look to replace their ship even if it still have 2-3 duras left. In their eyes less than 5 duras is no longer a cake. Go figure

[Wesreidau]

First off I don't much care for the hardcore / carebear paradigm, the assumption one or the other can exist in a game, and we have to kill the one to have the other.

Second we are lacking players, and making a decision oriented to kill one for the sake of the other is wrong-headed. We want as many positive Steam reviews as possible and as many players continuing for a year or longer as possible.

Our best course of action is to look at the successful MMO's and MOBA's to determine what keeps players coming back after defeats. The answer is a power ratchet; dying in a PvE or PvP engagement not setting you back to zero. These are the non-permadeath, full loot MMO's. Nearly all MMO's are non-permadeath, non-full-loot.

What you are suggesting is a permadeath, full-loot MMO. It would be great if you play Runescape. But if you play Runescape, you're not here in Naval Action.

And I'd like more people in Naval Action.

[Koltes]

1 hour ago, Wesreidau said:

First off I don't much care for the hardcore / carebear paradigm, the assumption one or the other can exist in a game, and we have to kill the one to have the other.

Second we are lacking players, and making a decision oriented to kill one for the sake of the other is wrong-headed. We want as many positive Steam reviews as possible and as many players continuing for a year or longer as possible.

Our best course of action is to look at the successful MMO's and MOBA's to determine what keeps players coming back after defeats. The answer is a power ratchet; dying in a PvE or PvP engagement not setting you back to zero. These are the non-permadeath, full loot MMO's. Nearly all MMO's are non-permadeath, non-full-loot.

What you are suggesting is a permadeath, full-loot MMO. It would be great if you play Runescape. But if you play Runescape, you're not here in Naval Action.

And I'd like more people in Naval Action.

You are controverting yourself, because you still care for one and not the other. Let me explain

First off I don't much care for the hardcore / carebear paradigm
But you should. Those are types of players we have under one roof. For decades game companies tried to marry up these groups and failed miserably many times except few. The most common solution they came up with are PVE, PVP and Softcore PVP servers. So yes we should care to at least recognise the difference if we want to cater for both types. Whether you like it or not, those players exist. If we don't know what makes a person happy we will never be able to talk his language.

the assumption one or the other can exist in a game, and we have to kill the one to have the other
No, we dont have to kill one to make "room" for the other.

We want as many positive Steam reviews as possible and as many players continuing for a year or longer as possible.
That's right. But for the game to have such long life it can't be simple. People are complex beings and never settle. We always want more which what drives the Progress.
For the game to be able to live long it needs to cater for crafters, economists, carebears, hardcore pvper, softcore pvpers, teenagers, mid age, 60+ crowd etc etc
If we want to make economist (should I say merchant) to happily play this game then you cant just give him deliver A to B, buy and sell to NPC type of economy. This wont keep him in game 10 mins. You cant give crafter 10 buttons to press and craft things on spot, no complexity, no customisation process. He will not stay.
What you are offering is very simplified easy mix, So to speak a hybrid of lobby and OW. This will cater mostly to casual and softcore recreational type gamer. Unfortunately game dont last long on these type of players. Games carried on the shoulders of hardcore PVPers. Anything that happens in PVP world globally is because of PVPers.

Our best course of action is to look at the successful MMO's and MOBA's
Thats exactly where the problem is with your proposal. You are bringing elements of arena setting into Open World of NA. The arena based game mechanics were specifically designed and carefully adjusted for arena based games. The lobby type games. How long have you been playing NA? Did you play during the time when there was no OW? We only had lobby matches at the time and after a little while everyone wanted more. We wanted the OW. The realism. Where everything is PVP. The economy, crafting, fighting, conquest, clan management, ship management everything is PVP and requires your actions and decisions that are affected by actions and decisions of other players of ALL type of gameplay style.
So when you say "our best course of action to look at the successul MMO's and MOBA's" I remove MOBA's straight away, because we are NO LONGER building MOBA game. Full stop. To make successful MMO open world game you just need to look at succesfull MMO Open World games and see what made them successful and apply same mechanics here.

Nearly all MMO's are non-permadeath, non-full-loot. What you are suggesting is a permadeath, full-loot MMO
No, I don't suggest this. Its how YOU see it. And because you see it this way it affects your interpretation and view.
Take EVE Online for example. When you die do you lose everything? No. You lose assets only. The ship, mods, whatever you carried on you and in your head. But then again new life begins. The life of a clone. There is NO PERMA DEATH in EVE.
No need to be a drama queen. There is NO PERMA DEATH in NA. Loosing your ship, all mods and cargo int he battle IS NOT perma-death by any means. Its just a loss of game assets which is a temporary penalty due to easy recovery.

And now I will comeback to your most controversial statement if not even hypocritical (no offence intended)
Second we are lacking players, and making a decision oriented to kill one for the sake of the other is wrong-headed.
This. Right here you are controverting yourself.
I have been playing for over a year now and seen players leaving in great numbers BECAUSE of decisions made regarding the direction of the game. First when OW was introduced it was the most hardcore it has ever been. All amendments and changes in the mechanics happen to reduce the hardcore factor. The game more and more holds hand of players. There is no risk, there is no rewards. It turned into dull one sided gameplay.
What you need to remember is that there is NO PVE content in this game because it was made INTENDED to be PVP only. Time ago devs even said term sandbox. We can surely say that NA is not a sandbox game any more and could never be.

It is an Open World PVP game.
What you fail to see that mechanics alike yours, that keep catering for one sided player mentality completely kills it for the other player ALREADY. You are saying that we should not look into killing one type of player for another, but you can't recognise the fact that you ALREADY killed the hardcore PVP guy.
We wanted hardcore PVP mechanics that keeps battles open, map that shows where fights are, economy that brings people together to fight over something meaningful, OW that is dangerous and UNFAIR and Port Battles are fair team on team fights, we players lose something meaningful but they also gain something meaningful.
We are not playing the Soap Opera for fk sackes!
And the PVP crowd is the main driving force in PVP game setting. And 90% of this crown has left. And there is very little going on in the Open World of Naval action today. And your ship mechanic proposal is another nail to the coffin of the PVP world.

[Wesreidau]

I'm sorry, how am I suggesting anything that takes away from the hardcore PVP crowd that isn't projecting other decisions or other opinions onto my proposal, because I've been labelled a "carebear" while you're "hardcore".

You are suggesting one durability and cheap ships so that crafters will constantly be cranking out cheap ships. I am suggesting permanent ships and overhauls so crafters will constantly crank out overhauls. Overhauls will cost as much as cheap ships, involving the same in-demand materials. Some tweaking may occur, perhaps alleviating some of the strain we've encountered with furnishings being very difficult to produce for some nations. Meanwhile planks, carriages, fittings, tar, canvas, ballast, barrels, cases, frame parts, logs... all grist for the economic grindstone.  There is nothing lost between our two proposals economically. What is gained is the ability to tailor an overhaul's price tag to the quality level of the ship being overhauled, making the maintenance fee so many talk about for exceptional ships to give a merit to lower quality levels. The overhaul price can also rise from rate to rate, until 1st rates become prohibitively expensive to overhaul, perhaps only slightly less expensive as buying them anew. This keeps first rates valuable as capital ships that cannot be easily replaced, if their overhaul costs 3/4ths of a new ship compared to a 2nd rate's 2/3rds or a 3rd rate's 1/2. Suddenly we see merits to not sailing an exceptional 1st rate.

If an overhaul costs as much as a cheap ship, absolutely nothing is lost except your one-dura ships will lose their mods. The devs are doing away with mods. They are actually moving toward a mod system where the mods will not be sinking with the ship, as best as I can tell. They are moving toward officer perks that persist with the player.

Thus the only economic difference is that players who don't grind out blueprints are still relevant to shipbuilding through the overhaul contract system, and can therefore produce crafting XP to reach higher crafting levels anyhow. So we get rid of trade lynx build/break grinding.

The only thing lost is how "hardcore" you think it is, and how much of a market shipbuilders have. Crafting persists as before, shifting post-wipe crafters toward supplying the market for overhauls rather than wastefully grinding trade lynxes for blueprints, and we still see fights for resources since overhauls will still consume live oak, mahogany, compass wood, gold, silver, labor contracts, bermuda silver, and anything else we fight over.