NA changes

[Duncan McFail]

I see a ton of negative views towards the game lately. In the forums, on global chat, and especially in the steam reviews. I see the lowest server populations ever. I see devs wanting to revert back to old school systems with new and more hardcore changes. The future of the game seems uncertain. I have certain changes that I'd like to see, but every player is unique in their own wants. Since the end of last January when I started there have been a ton of changes to the game. Some great and some not so good. I spend a lot of my time focusing on the negative as do many other players. Especially when it comes to the future of the game.

I can only give my own personal views as it's impossible to speak for anyone else. I started over a year ago when the game first came to steam. I used to play POTBS and fell in love with this game due to the similarities plus skill shooting. The game had a steep learning curve and was definitely not action packed, but I still loved every minute of it. Now a days I spend my time doing rvr with a fun group of guys. I don't enjoy pve much and hate grinding AI's. I like hunting traders and players. I enjoy crafting and amassing wealth/resources too. I've enjoyed this game from square one and continue to enjoy it despite implementations that have reduced the fun for me. The devs have put together a great game and will hopefully continue to make it better patch by patch. They have listened to players in the past and have made some changes that are great while others weren't from my perspective. The rest of this post is my personal views of the changes that have been made to this game, so you might want to stop if nothing's interested you so far.

The first patches I remember increased resource production. These were great since we couldn't produce our own at the time.

Steam account sync was great. No cross server trading of hours. Swap servers whenever and benefit all. Reroll nations if your not in a good place.

Later xp rewards off of missions were super buffed then toned back down. I hated the grind.

Port battles used to go on for the full hour 20 with a small group of defenders running through towers the whole time. Circle of death and lower BR was great.

When they ninja swapped Camp du Roy from freetown to neutral pissed me off to no end. I lost all my stuff in there and basically had to start over. The lack of communication almost made me quit the game.

No more reinforcements. I hated reinforcements except for farming them. Best removal ever.

Enter production buildings. Just awesome. Even the shipyards were fine.

No cooldowns on the warehouse to warehouse tp's was great. Less time spent sailing for hours.

Marines nerfed. Changed to percentage of crew after I just started killing folks with newly aquired gold marines. But they were super OP then and needed it.

Land added for combat and later port battles. This was probably one of the best features ever added.

Lobbied duels with no risk of loss was great too.

Changing up time and restrictions to enter battles was something I hated. It gave people protection in the open world when there should be none.

Leaks were cool and finally toned down to a decent level although I'd still like to see a ship go down when it exposes it's belly as much as some players still do. The ramming leaks were kinda cool, but way to OP. I'd be down with seeing them come back toned down though.

Smuggler flag was great until you could use it safely.

Clan warehouses were awesome. Wish you could put ships in there.

Having to hire crew I wasn't too hot on. I really dislike the whole medkit thing. You have to have them at any port you want to go out and fight from. They just seem to bog down the game a bit.

Fishing was awesome as were the bottles. Something for people to do while sailing those long hauls.

Praying is great for the few of us that knows exactly what it can do.

No more pirate on pirate was kind of sad to see go. I'll be happy to see it back again.

Officers were cool cause they beefed up your stats with bonuses. I love being able to min/max them ships. The 10 life thing is kind of a pain. I don't like being combat ineffective until I grind up to get back to battle.

Then alliances came out. The 2 most populated nations on our server started an alliance as soon as this came out and carebeared it up ever since. Killed pirates on pvp1 and made us struggle on pvp2 since pirates are a nation, but still a gimped nation. I was fully against alliances as they were implemented, but would be okay with them implementing it differently.

The new hostility system killed it for most of my clan. We hate grinding AI. It seemed like a good idea, but counter-grinding through pvp was hard. It became harder after battles closed in 5 minutes. Most of us could be bothered and many left the game.

New port battles were only cool because the land got added in. The 3 circles favored the defender heavily. We already came to port battles with less than 25. While the allied US/Brits came 25+ everytime. It became more of a chase than it was before and usually ended up in a loss even when we sunk more of them than we lost. At least decent rewards are given when you win.

Fine woods made it really hard for players to get ships. Too many people quit over this. The compensation after getting rid of that system was too much and turned people into billionares.

Regional trims were awesome. It sucked having to spread out my materials to so many different ports, but I love bonus stats.

Splinter damage was crazy. Between getting raked or just taking broadsides your crew got so cut down you became ineffective quick. It was reduced to become acceptable, but it took too long.

Most all mods were nerfed heavily. I like my bonus' so this was a sad change for me.

The dual tag circle was crap. I had to get so close to someone to tag them and then bring in the ton of AI around too. This made hunting very hard.

Forts were bs. It gave people something else to hide behind instead of fighting. At first they were powerful enough to sink a first rate in minutes. Even after being toned down they would make it near impossible to fight someone while taking fire from one. More protection made hunting near impossible in enemy waters.

Battles closed instantly was horrid. The progression of how long battles stay open just keeps getting farther away from the "never being safe on the OW" where I liked it.

Pvp/pve events are cool. Sucks the pvp ones get exploited. The deadmans chest events were cool too. Just problem with consistency and goods available, but they were fun.

Out of all the changes I've seen they've been positive. Besides the way alliances were implemented and most of the new conquest patch I've been satisfied. A few extreme tweaks with armor/chain/grape/resources that were annoying until a good middle ground was found, but all in all good stuff. A good deal of the changes going to testbed I'm okay with. Pirate on pirate will be great. 1 dura ships will be awesome. I'm hoping I can live without teleports and deliveries, but we'll see what kind of time sink that is. Don't buff the forts. I'll miss being able to sling ships and capping multiple ships in battle. I'm not going to like having to grind forever to get ships up to full effectiveness. Full player based economy will be tough if the population isn't there. I'm sure other players can remember more changes they loved/hated.

This whole post really isn't a suggestion. More like what I feel about past changes as a player with what I'd like to see in this game. I've been a bit sad with the direction of the game, but failed to remember how far it's come. In the future I'd like to see changes that help the server population grow, maintain consistent pvp, increase diversity in playstyles/crafting, and retain that hardcore feeling of loss when you lose a ship.

[admin]

Current changes are good for the game. 
Some previous experiments did not achieve the desired result and were abandoned or moved to rework backlog (like alliances).

[Farrago]

On 4/19/2017 at 7:11 AM, Duncan McFail said:

I see a ton of negative views towards the game lately. In the forums, on global chat, and especially in the steam reviews. I see the lowest server populations ever. I see devs wanting to revert back to......

I hate seeing you in game because it usually means some of my side is about to die but this whole thing was an excellent post. You really captured the good, bad, and ugly about this game's progress. Thanks.