Why are the playernumbers so low?

[z4ys]

19 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

That was kinda my point of posting the patches.  They did a pretty steady job of adding stuff last year, but we really haven't gotten much for new content since the end of last year.   Even the current testbed is 2 months old

There is a test server with updates all the time.

You may remember community complained that patches are not finished so they moved them to a test server. And again not their fault its our.

Edited April 11, 2017 by z4ys

[Sir Texas Sir]

24 minutes ago, z4ys said:

There is a test server with updates all the time.

You may remember community complained that patches are not finished so they moved them to a test server. And again not their fault its our.

Actually there hasn't been any updates to test server since Feb 17.  I'm on there all the time, but kinda hard to test things when there is only like 2-4 of us on and they have not updated it since almost two months ago.

[Christendom]

So lets say a month ago RVR was the only thing keeping this game alive, aka people logging in.  Wipe announced, server splits announced + a whole other mess of changes.  No reason to RVR anymore and those that are typically online stop doing so.  Game dies.  MMO games run on end game content and we currently have none.

Prior to the wipe announcement OW pvp was challenging at best.  Other than raiding around Navasse and KPR, it was rare to find it.  With the server population cut in half from what it was a month ago it's impossible.  I sailed around Saturday/Sunday in a ship full of loot outside Navasse and saw the same dozen people.  

Losing population from a game such as this is a snowball effect.  Sandbox games rely on players to provide content and if your player base keeps dropping month after month so does your content.  Which is why all the changes proposed by admin doesn't fill me with excitement.  You can make all the changes you want to the OW and try to improve it, but the only thing that will really matter is if people will be on to use said changes.  

I fear that the time between wipe announcement and said patch will be too long and folks will just move on.  

Edited April 11, 2017 by Christendom

[jodgi]

I'm extremely curious to see how the sandbox hardliner 1-dura experiment will go. People have said it will fix everything the last year.

I'm poised with pre-prepared thinly veiled schadenfreude.

Don't mind me. I'm the guy who's constantly told I don't belong here because I don't believe loss is compatible with pvpers providing fun content for each other.

I welcome the idea that I might be wrong, because then we have a game where people meet up to pew-pew each other. In that case even I win.

[Vernon Merrill]

13 minutes ago, jodgi said:

I'm extremely curious to see how the sandbox hardliner 1-dura experiment will go. People have said it will fix everything the last year.

I'm poised with pre-prepared thinly veiled schadenfreude.

Don't mind me. I'm the guy who's constantly told I don't belong here because I don't believe loss is compatible with pvpers providing fun content for each other.

I welcome the idea that I might be wrong, because then we have a game where people meet up to pew-pew each other. In that case even I win.

Correct.  People are so worried about losing that theyre not even fighting.   Thats silly to me.  Maybe it really does have to do with fact that you dont just lose, you get it broadcast over Global chat just how much of a noob you are....  Hmmmmmm

[Mirones]

Quote

Wipe => nothing to lose => No achievements = boring

people are doing this since sea trails 3 years ago  gues what we all are going to die one day should we kill ourself now to save us some time

[z4ys]

20 minutes ago, Mirones said:

people are doing this since sea trails 3 years ago  gues what we all are going to die one day should we kill ourself now to save us some time

thats something diffrend ofc everyone dies one day but so far you can still achive something or at least try and after that its game over. But a wipe is something differend its a new beginning not an ending.

[BusterGut]

Well I'm still playing and will up to the wipe unless I get to lvl50 crafting sooner.

 

But Ialso want to sail my ships, there's nothing worse than forgetting how to sail properly, after all a rusty sailer is good for the gankers (ggrrrrhhh)

[BusterGut]

1 hour ago, Vernon Merrill said:

Correct.  People are so worried about losing that theyre not even fighting.   Thats silly to me.  Maybe it really does have to do with fact that you dont just lose, you get it broadcast over Global chat just how much of a noob you are....  Hmmmmmm

I also think a lot of it because of the cowards who won't fight someone of equal rank and ship type, they get 4 or 5 clan members and go and grief a noob. personally I would like to see these people named and shamed on something like youtube and also put their names in global chat, especially if you know you are going to lose you might as well give them some grief. Nobody likes a bully.

[admin]

2 hours ago, jodgi said:

I'm extremely curious to see how the sandbox hardliner 1-dura experiment will go. People have said it will fix everything the last year.

I'm poised with pre-prepared thinly veiled schadenfreude.

Don't mind me. I'm the guy who's constantly told I don't belong here because I don't believe loss is compatible with pvpers providing fun content for each other.

I welcome the idea that I might be wrong, because then we have a game where people meet up to pew-pew each other. In that case even I win.

There is a game we work on just for you  with wenches and tournaments (wenches after tournaments). Its a separate game. With no open world. Kaos edition

[elite92]

58 minutes ago, admin said:

There is a game we work on just for you  with wenches and tournaments (wenches after tournaments). Its a separate game. With no open world. Kaos edition

do u have an eta for it?

it should not require much work if its like sea trials, something like end of 2017?

ty for the effort and the great work , keep it up guys

[Ned Low]

8 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Okay I took the time and went over all the patches and when the notes where released for each one.  Now remember back in the start of the year they release a plan for the year and told us they will try to get more patches out in shorter amount of times and give us better notes and turn around.   To be honest I love this game and want the best, but look at the history of the player drops and patches.  They really need to work on how they announce patches and how often they release stuff.  Right now a lot of folks are bored cause there is no new content on a game in development.  The Ship crafting stuff was announced last November 2nd as being maybe a Dec/Jan patch but was put on the shelf.  So tell me WHAT THE HECK HAVE THEY BEEN WORKING ON FOR THE LAST 5 MONTHS?

Patch history for last year since EA started                                                  Patch history so far for 2017

9.62 Minor patch after EA                      Jan 28                                          9.97 Hotfix                               Dec 9, 15, Jan 6, 11   

9.63 Iron Crisis                                      Feb 3                                           Content plans for 2017             Jan 19

9,.64 Small Battles and Account XP    Feb 11                                          9.98 Deployed to test bed         Feb 17

9.65 Crew and resources production  March 10

9.66 Hotfix changes                           March 17  

9.67 Hotfix Changes                          March 23                                     

9.68                                                   March 31                                      

9.7 - Land Sighted                            April 12                                         Where we stand right now

9.71 Hotfix                                       April 14

9.72 Hotfix                                       April 15

9.73 Hotfix                                      April 20

9.8 Damage Model 5.0                 May 19

9.81 Hotfix                                    May 25

9.82                                              May 27

9,83 Hotfix                                    Jun 3

9.84 Hotfix                                   Jun 15

9.9 Officer, fishing, Provisions    Jun 29

9.91 Prohibition cancelled/Rum   Jun 30

9.92 Hotfix                                     Jul 7

9.93 Bucentaure, accel rework     Jul 28

9.94 Alliances, new ships              Aug 17

9.95 Scial Perk and other           Sep 1

9.96 New Conquest                   Oct 20

9.97 Events, minor crafting         Dec 5th

9.97 Hotfix: Land in port battles Dec 19

Now I get that there will be a lot of tweeks between big patches and such, but if you look at this, we are in almost mid April and not a single big content patch since Dec 18th which was late part of the Dec 5th patch cause not every thing was ready.  That is how you should do it.  Release the main patch and than follow through with the 9.971 Land in port battles and other hotfix's.  Don't announce your going to do something major and than keep adding content so that a patch comes out months later.    

Wow, it's been really slow here. 

 

2 hours ago, admin said:

There is a game we work on just for you  with wenches and tournaments (wenches after tournaments). Its a separate game. With no open world. Kaos edition

Are they at least going to be Manga style wenches?

[jodgi]

3 hours ago, admin said:

There is a game we work on just for you  with wenches and tournaments (wenches after tournaments). Its a separate game. With no open world. Kaos edition

Yes, I noticed that. Looking forward to that.

[Kaos]

7 hours ago, admin said:

There is a game we work on just for you  with wenches and tournaments (wenches after tournaments). Its a separate game. With no open world. Kaos edition

Don't get me wrong, probably my best memories of this game were from early open world when it was more laissez-faire but near the ea launch I was completely disillusioned with the direction this game was going and that I am probably in the wrong game when I had to return to Mort one day to resupply after being on the sea for weeks, hunting and see a big blob of pirates with frigs and above just farming AI in there without any danger nor risk and you rascal even put a safe space greenhouse around the pirate(!!) capital and on top of it turned off the pirate vs pirate so you couldn't even attack these vegans when they strayed outside and I had to check if I was actually on pvp server or misclicked on pve. Such a contrast because Mort used to be very silent and quiet when pirate vs pirate was still on without safe zone and approaching it was always quite a thrill : )

You just made everything too fluffy and safe on pvp server I think, trying to please every newcomer and their special needs but it did not help the long term resilience and vertical progression of each individual because they never really bothered nor needed to discover the full potential of your magnificent combat system, they did not need to learn how to survive or position themselves, lost the sense of danger which I think is big part of experience, only knew the port-farm-craft-kill-die-farm routine cycle and their pvp experience was limited to ganking others of their kind in overwhelming force (''playing with their friends'') and cheesing their way out of any potentially interesting confrontation (which would be winnable for both sides) by tagging some nearby AI at max range or nowadays just rely on AI towers on coastlines.

So I think you can sympathize that after coming from the school of Doran and Rakers, these type of people could not offer any kind of meaningful challenge nor inspiring value for our time because they simply lack the experience and skills which I am not blaming them for, but you made sure that they would never need to improve nor have incentive for it either because of all the crutches and handhold stuff you implemented to keep them afloat to perhaps secure the ratings?

Then again I completely understand that open world Kaos edition would probably not sell so well or get above 20% ratings from current customers therefore no big hate, it was fun while it lasted.

[HachiRoku]

Funny thing is I'm still getting loads of pvp. Makes me wonder what everyone is doing when there are 600 people online. I guess they are alt tabed complaining in national forums and crying in global chat. 

[admin]

20 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

 

Now I get that there will be a lot of tweeks between big patches and such, but if you look at this, we are in almost mid April and not a single big content patch since Dec 18th which was late part of the Dec 5th patch cause not every thing was ready.   

You are twisting the facts mate. 

We announced long ago that we are not patching live servers and patch testbed servers instead. Lots of new features are already on testbed (including admiralty and new structure). More than 5 patches were deployed since december to testbed.

Why dont you count them in your research and why you twist the facts this way misrepresenting the patch number?

[admin]

12 hours ago, Ned Low said:

Wow, it's been really slow here. 

5 patches were deployed to testbed. over 3 months. You are replying to a wrong post with wrong information

Testbed is the main server until the wipe. We confirmed it on 03/03. Live servers are dead and will only get worked on after the wipe. All the development going to testbed only

[qw569😳]

21 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

9,.64 Small Battles and Account XP    Feb 11                                          9.98 Deployed to test bed         Feb 17

It's too difficult search patch notes on the forum. Thank Vasya that sometime help me

I want to add some information:

 

 

I hope this figure will be useful for timing game and server.

 

Edited April 12, 2017 by qw569

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 hour ago, admin said:

You are twisting the facts mate. 

We announced long ago that we are not patching live servers and patch testbed servers instead. Lots of new features are already on testbed (including admiralty and new structure). More than 5 patches were deployed since december to testbed. Testbed wasn't open until Jan 27 so how did you patch it since December?  

Why dont you count them in your research and why you twist the facts this way misrepresenting the patch number?  Cause you didn't post any of them.  Plus my info was not about Testbed it was about live server.   The OP question was about why are numbers low on the live servers.  

I understand that,but when do they go live?  NEVER?  That is how it seems.  In fact every one was expecting a patch last month of the 3 dura 1st rates and every thing that is currently in testbed, but ya'll stopped that and put every thing on hold.....yet again putting patches on hold to go live for another month and half.   Which means we have not had a patch to live in 5 months (well in 5 days it will be 5 months).   I get the 3 dura part was a fix for the duping problems, but why couldn't the structure and Pirate vs Pirate parts be put to live.   No one uses testbed so it doesn't properly get tested with a few guys on there.  Max I seen is 11 and I'll be honest three of those where my chars as I had them all logged on to test fights between two pirates and anattional for the FFA.  That and the Marks system.  Yes I fought my own char to see if it worked and than the 1 hour cool down no rewards and that works too.   So yes some of us are going there and testing and I do F11's every time something comes up.  Hell glad the PvE missions are getting dropped cause now I can stop reporting on the issues every time I tried them.

As for 5 patches on testbed.  I put on there what you posted in the patch section for the live server only.  I only seen two patches listed and that is when testbed went live and the Feb patch.

 WHY DON'T YOU POST YOUR PATCH NOTES WHEN YOU MAKE THEM?   

I know there are more hotfixes and patches that where made on both live and testbed but I only posted the data we have in the patch notes section of what you posted to inform us.  Some times you do hotfixes without telling us and that is ok for hotfixes.   I believe that was the way you fixed the dupping mods/ship proble with a hotfix not the actual testbed 3 dura solution.    See the problem here is communication and ya'll for the better word suck at it.  You need a Community Rep to pass your info on and to be clear and not get hot headed every time some one says something bad about your game.  I love this game, but it has a lot of issues specially when dealing with the Devs vs the Customers.  Devs have never made good Customer Reps. 

But who cares maybe we will get 9.98 in May at this rate.  I mean it's not like Tesbed has been updated by the time you promised (first by the 10th and maybe by the end of this week).  Ya'll keep adding things to the list and adding them.  That is your mistake.  You need to do stages and release those stages every couple of months with hotfix's.  This ship crafting stuff was announced back in November.  So why has it taken so long to get it implemented?  Many of us are asking, "WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN WORKING ON?"  Show us with the patch.  I'll happly shut up when it comes out around the 19/20th or end of month or even May since it keeps changing.

And I did notice I missed the testbed deployed one, but like some one said patches are hard to find and well Devs have actually not posted every time they patched to the details there is is a few patch notes that are off on datesd cause we buggeed them to post the patch notes several days after the patch came out last year.

Edited April 12, 2017 by Sir Texas Sir

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 hour ago, qw569 said:

It's too difficult search patch notes on the forum. Thank Vasya that sometime help me

I want to add some information:

  Hide contents

 

I hope this figure will be useful for timing game and server.

 

I left the testbed stuff off cause it was a question about the live server.  Not the testbed.   That and I forgot the silly 5 min battle timer hot fix which was really there way to spur folks to get out and sink more ships before the patch, but i think it backfired more than did what they want.  Just means all the gankers where out in force.  Which is a very small percentage of there player base.   The casual players that make up of abut 90% of there player base stayed in side or went to play other games.

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 hour ago, admin said:

5 patches were deployed to testbed. over 3 months. You are replying to a wrong post with wrong information

Testbed is the main server until the wipe. We confirmed it on 03/03. Live servers are dead and will only get worked on after the wipe. All the development going to testbed only

Wait when did this come around cause apparently no one informed your players of this?   Cause if you did than I'm pretty sure every one would of been moved over to the testbed servers?   See again your communications sucks to your customers.  Now I'm going have to go dig through a billion post and i bet it's on page 20 something you said this instead of actually making a full post about it or you edit the post without making an announcement of a post some one all ready read and saw no reason to read again.  You need to have an announcement section that has the current info and that is locked to comments.  Let the feedback be in another section that can get spam with a billion comments.   To much info get lost on 20 pages back or on update of data info that isn't known cause we don't see the announcements.

 

Make the announcement page.  Lock it to only the admin.  When he updates that announcement he makes the comment and only him.  Than have another post that is feed back.   I'll make examples for you.

 

Announcement of Patch 9.98 Information on Ship Crafting changes and other stuff:  

This post in a thread that is only for Announcement is locked and only post of the Admin when he updates the info is made.  So it has the main post and any post after that is just Admin going.  INFO UPDATED.  So you know he updated the info and it's not lost on page 20 of spam comments.

Feedback of Patch 9.98 Information on Ship Crafting changes and other stuff:  

This post is not locked and we can comment anything we want.  The original post has the same info as the announcement post and is updated when it is, but it is made so we can comment and make question.   This way the info isn't lost to the players.   This post can be made by your staff as it's just a copy of the one posted by ADMIN and the DEV team.

[Thonys]

well to give you the other reason why the player base dropped was: (for the dutch...)

after the discovery off the dutch player base, that there was an upgrade/ship scandal, there were several meetings where they ddecided not to play anymore and wait for the patch...

they just didn t like the idea that there were still upgrades and op ships in the game to play against.also because of the fact that the devs new about it, and didn't  do anything against this unfair behavior, it was a major reason to quit the game or leave it for a while until the next patch..

to put it in other words they have a holiday until the next patch...

the good news is they will be back ..(i hope)

cheating and foul play  is not a behavior that reflects the dutch community in the form of standards, norms, and values and therefore it becomes a abanded game for many..

even the fact that there are no dutch ships, is seen as a huge insult to the maritime history of our country and their people who play this game

Edited April 12, 2017 by Thonys

[monk33y]

Let be honest iv never known any other game announce a wipe months in advance. A few weeks, yeah I can understand that. But a not month or two (with delays) down the line!!

There is no point at the moment, servers are empty. Most players are taking a break. Hopefully this dead time will help improve the games comunity.

 

[Mrdoomed]

On 4/11/2017 at 4:27 AM, JollyRoger1516 said:

Honestly I would still play if people were around but looking at a server with 180 people on it is just depressing and I find no action so in the end I am elsewhere as well.

I know when my group all quit it was because of this reason of having nothing to do. On the rare rare chance of seeing someone in the OW without 20 ai protecting him , they would always just make a bee line to a fort or tower so there just became nothing to do but RvR which is not fun for some. 

I think most of who is left is the RvR players and pve mission to the top so they can RvR.  With a wipe on the horizon not many want to RvR. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

PvP2 46

PvP1 34

PvE 23

Testbed 3

And this is US prime time where we whould normally have around 150-200 on PvP2.  Prettty dang sad.