Three small questions/suggestions for version 10.0

[James Cornelius]

@admin

 

I was wondering if you could explain the reasoning behind a few of the decisions in the new patch, and suggest an alternative for you to consider for some of them.

 

1) The removal of coordinates and grid system. I know what some people will say: "There was no GPS in the early 1800s". This is true. There was, however, a very thorough understanding of celestial navigation. As you are no doubt aware, good captains prided themselves on their mathematical (and therefore navigational) ability. The Caribbean and Atlantic coasts were not the same as the Indian Ocean and Pacific when it came to the possibility of getting lost. Even in those far more desolate areas, there was still a very good idea of where all the major landmarks were and no good captain was ever forced to rely on dead reckoning except in certain extreme circumstances.

 

All ship captains, sailing masters, and typically watch officers (including midshipman) had their own sextant from which to utilize to find their position. It is therefore completely unrealistic for a warship of the time to navigate solely by dead reckoning.

 

For those arguing for "total realism" and suggesting that giving the latitude and longitude of your ship somehow breaks this, I would respectfully suggest that the developers institute one of the following changes in the next patch:

1A ) The inclusion of a sextant mini-game to satisfy the requirements of the most zealous of "realism" junkies. If you have time, perhaps you could include formulating a watch bill, a tracker for the consumption of grog by your seamen, and Thursday laundry. (Please note that I am being completely sarcastic about all this).

1B ) The return of the grid from previous versions, and a position for your vessel given at noon each day that your ship is in clear weather. Thus, if absolute realism is the goal, this would simulate the ability of the captain and the master to take a noon observation and mark the ship's position provided weather cooperated accordingly. It is the perfect compromise, because it is in fact perfectly realistic.

 

2) My second question is concerning the removal of AI ships from Fleet Missions. I think I understand what you might have wanted to do, but I would ask if you considered that there are probably many people (I have spoken to quite a few in GB PVP-EU nation chat) who found them very useful when either there was little PVP to be found, or sometimes when you just didn't have time to go on a long cruise looking for PVP, but wanted a little fleet battle. Again, I understand the desire for a realistic MMO, but please also consider that it is a game and there is a certain element to it that people enjoy and are now no longer able to utilize. I can see no reason to eliminate this feature - it did not hurt anything and if hostility generation was the problem, that has been reworked anyway. Could you please explain why you changed this?

 

3) Why were the servers simply renamed? I think many players, including myself, either misunderstood or felt misled by what we thought was happening when a "full asset wipe" was announced - that there would be a new choice of server based upon whether a player was in the EU, and therefore wanted timers limited to their normal hours, or wanted to truly play globally with people from around the world and accept and understand that the game was ongoing and attacks, port battles, etc would happen as people played throughout the day: i.e. there would always be activity no matter what time you logged on.

 

However, since the global server is merely a renamed PVP2 US (which was already rather depopulated compared to the EU server), it so far seems that its population relative to the EU server has remained unchanged. If one subscribes to the view that Naval Action is a true MMO yet also hard core sailing simulation, then one must also accept that - just like real sailing war - action takes place at all hours of the day across many time zones. Could you please explain a little of your reasoning here?

 

Finally, I do not wish to seem that I do not like the new patch or I am complaining without cause. I have put over 1000 hours into the game, which I know is less than some, but for me is still a substantial investment of time. I have put far, far more time into Naval Action than I have games from blockbuster developers and that says something about what you have taken on here.

 

But, I think I am not alone when I wonder about why certain decisions were made when it seems that it sets the game backwards compared to what it was in previous versions. I would just appreciate it - and I am sure others would as well - if you could explain some of these decisions so that I can at least understand why you made them.

 

Thank you very much for your time.

Edited May 26, 2017 by Sir R. Calder of Southwick
error in thread title

[Anolytic]

1. Coordinates were not removed for realism reasons, but for gameplay reasons. As many of us expressed, part of the "Experience" of Naval Action was the challenge of navigating and the constant chance of getting lost. More than this though, the removal of the GPS pushes players towards the coasts and into predictable sea lanes. You can no longer easily plot a course far out to sea in order to minimize the chances of coming across an enemy player when moving from one location to another. To navigate you will have to follow the coast, meaning that you will be likely to bump into other players also following the coast.

As I have understood it from devs statements the map will be redesigned/revisited together with the UI later. Maybe to bring back the grid - but not coordinates - or add other tools. However this is far into the future and for now the map will remain as it is.

2. If you set up base in a small region or cluttered area, there are no problems finding AI to attack in OW, of all sizes (finding fleets of the right nation you want to attack for hostility however, that's another matter). If I just want to grind mindlessly PvE it wouldn't take me 2 minutes to find a suitable fleet to attack.

3. Except for existing clans and player names not being wiped, which was a bit surprising (and a bit disappointing I must admit) there was no surprises about the server situation. It was quite clear to me by the information from the devs, that the physical server structure would remain unchanged, and that only "server shards" - the data on those servers - would be manipulated. At that point it made little sense to make a switch of the shards between the servers just for good measure, adding tons of extra work and potential for data loss. 

While unexpected, it does make sense why they did not wipe our characters or our clans from the servers. If they had, the following situation is bound to have happened: People would be rushing to grind money and create clans clans and characters with names that other people and rivals had been using, just to troll them or to extort them. In my clan we were planning to rush to secure our own clan tag on both EU and Global server, and I am sure others had the same concern. Luckily I created RDNN on the former-PvP2-now-Global-server months ago so I was fortunate to not have to remake the clan on either server, except we had to jump through a few hoops to replace an inactive clan creator with an alt account to control the clan.