My Impressions since the latest patch.

[Lady Athena]

I decided to write in the faint hopes that someone on the dev team reads this. It echoes alot of what I hear around the servers and forums, and I feel I'm not alone in most of my impressions of the patch.

I'm not going to discuss Crafting and all of the issues with that. That alone is a whole different beast even though it does tie into everything, literally. For that go here:

I will slightly touch base on crafting to reiterate something, but that's all I'll go into it.

----------------------------------

The recent patch of Naval Action was what I'd call a tasty piece of poison in a candy wrapper. It looked sweet, I liked much of it, but in the end much of what wasn't explained fully, ruined it and completely undid all the good  I saw in the patch notes.

----------------------------------

Honestly its the economy if anything completely killing this game...

Oh boy this is a big one... No MMO like this can sustain itself without a properly balanced, engaging, and interactive economy. One that acts much like a real world economy. This is why EVE as an example works so well and has been alive and kicking for so long. If the economy didn't fluctuate, and allow for a proper push and pull and flow of goods in and out, it'd of died in the first year a decade ago. It doesn't matter how good the rest of the gameplay is, if your economy is so bad that players struggle to get even the most basic of things... You're in trouble and so is your games lifespan.

 

A good economy in a game such as this one is trying to be, needs to have a proper flow of goods. It's a "circle of life". Crafters need a good flow of goods in by traders so they can give a good flow of goods out. This allows traders to have the goods they need to trade, while making money, and crafters get the goods they need to supply the ships, upgrades, etc. the rest of the players need in a reasonable cost range.

Right now the economy is setup where you literally have walls barring the path of goods to crafters, while at the same time they're hit with a double punch to the gut now that traders are trading "Trade goods" that do nothing for the economy.

 

Now you have a broken wheel. Crafters aren't getting what they need, meanwhile traders instead of being the grease that makes the economy machine run, are sapping all the life out of it by sucking the gold out through trade goods, and giving nothing back in return. This in turn makes the prices for everything insanely high, making it extremely frustrating and disheartening for new players wanting to come in and do some combat or even play the game.

THe double punch to the gut for the player base focusing on PVP and combat is that with the 1 durability on ships now (Which I do like btw.. if the economy was fixed), they lose everything in one go. This is a massive punishment to new players who have to dish out 80k for a basic tier ship + the cannons, crew, etc. only to have a chance to lose it 30 minutes later in a fight.

---------------------------------

Pirate Faction:

Again this has been talked about to death I get it. I even wrote several posts myself over a year ago about how the pirate faction could be something.. so I wont get into it too much... Except.. There are problems, which do completely counteract the whole point of what its supposed to be, much like how the current iteration of the economy completely defeats itself for what its purpose is supposed to be. The pirate faction is no less.

WHy?

Because it quite honestly is not a pirate faction. It's a normal faction with a special trick and nothing more.

Now what the devs want idk.. They've gone back and forth so much I have no clue what they want. Do they want it historical? Or aiming to be realistic? Or do they not care? because depending on what mechanic or area of the game you look at greatly changes that idea of what they want. On one hand you have many things that are "historically accurate" where ports are.. what they're named. Ships, even the tiers and sizes and guns, etc. where things are on the map and what ports had them realistically.. Awesome... Then you get into the factions, OW, ship battle instances, and all the realism goes right out the window.

 

At the moment pirates are given 2 area's on the map, are told they can fight each other, but then are surrounded by the big boys on all sides, and to make matters worse, both pirate havens are surrounded on all sides near the main area's of 2 major factions...  Completely counter productive...

Pirates are forced then, to work together. They feel as though to survive, to make ships, to get anywhere they have to band together and work no different than any other faction. Pirates who attack other pirates are immediately shunned, hunted, harrassed, and forced off the server.

My suggestions to combat this was to remove pirate faction all together, and instead impliment some other form of how lawful a player is, unlawful players get the pirate tag. They get special bonus's for it, but, can only enter special pirate haven ports spread around the map, these area's can't be taken, and you're a pirate of a main faction, rather than in a pirate faction.

Pirates can't have guilds, but of course can still work together if they want, but this will spread them around the map. Selling loot to pirate havens gives you a huge boost to payout than through a normal port to compensate and make piracy worth it. Much more dangerous, but a chance of much bigger payouts selling the loot to pirate havens.

--------------------------

 

The open World:

 

It's been 2 years since I bought this game, and to be honest.. It's gone nowhere meaningful. Open World was a great addition, but it's..empty.. The road map has all but been forgotten, or moved around, and the remaining few things they were going to impliment is barely the start of what this game needs to make it feel worthwhile to play, with real end goals, and player interactions and guild interactions that are meaningful.

It's been 2 years of revising the same mechanics over and over and over... and somehow getting worse each time.

-----------------------------

Conclusion:

 

I can't give a pass to the devs on this absurd economy. The excuses of "well we have to see" is a cop out excuse. A good economy is not some mystery of the universe, nor is it difficult. If I throw a knife at my brother, I dont' need to "see what happens" logic, common sense, and knowledge of physics tells me exactly what's going to happen. There may be slight variations but the outcome will be relatively the same.. Economy is no different, with a little forthought, common sense, and knowledge of the most basics of economy you can come up with a system that's well balanced and only needs a few tweaks... Devs didn't get close. That's not to mistake the fact that you can tweak the current economy mechanics to "work" but.. it doesn't mean its good either.

 

In 2 years:

- Still the most basic of basic guild and faction system, one that I with less than a month of programming knowledge could code in less than half a day with additions to it.

- A worse economy than before

- Still an empty shell of an open world with no real interactions past randomly hitting random players or NPC ships cuz "reasons".

- Still the most basic of ugly UI's.... (Yes I get it, they gave bad reasons for why they haven't done anything to it.. I'm on an unfunded indie team and I can find UI artists and gfx artists to work under royalty in a matter of hours if you look and get a UI setup in a game in the next few weeks.. It's not difficult. It's lazy. I can't give them a pass on this either).

- Tooltips and UI information still completely nonsensical and unhelpful to new players (This is why tooltips exist.. to help the new players.. not old players who already know it and just need a little reminder). Hovering over an item I should not see Cannon_Center_Accuracy_(insert more nonsensical crap) .4   There's some tooltips that are so wtf when you read it only a person who's tested it knows wtf it does. No excuse for this lack of basic information, in a setup that's nonsensical and unhelpful.

Same goes for cannons on Ships. 4-5/5-6 means NOTHING to new players, if you have to ask what information on the screen is telling you, and even then after knowing its easy to forget, and or can be easily mixed up... You massively messed up... This is important information to a player and shouldn't be given in such nonsensical ways.

Again I cannot give a pass on the devs for this.

 

This and other issues that have no reason for being with a competent dev team has made me put the naval action game on the shelf once again for a year, and maybe forever.. In 2 years this is the best we can hope for is not a shining beacon or even a small candle in a strong wind of a hope of this game becoming something worth playing. I'll be telling friends to avoid this game completely, which is unfortunate.. I wanted to love it. I supported the devs and gave them the benefit of the doubt for 2 years and running... Yet.... They have only themselves to blame.

 

 

 

 

 

[monk33y]

You forgot to add that finely we have ballance!  And nations must work towards resources. 

(it's funny how the ex big nations cough #gb, don't have it easy anymore and that is now unfair) 

[Lord_Sluggo]

4 hours ago, monk33y said:

You forgot to add that finely we have ballance!  And nations must work towards resources. 

(it's funny how the ex big nations cough #gb, don't have it easy anymore and that is now unfair) 

No one gives two rips about RvR except the 200 or so super hardcore players who will love this game no matter what. For the other 99,800 who bought this game, the devs have been focusing on the wrong things for two long and it is absolutely destroying this game. I first came to Naval Action with friends from Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars. They all quit due to the lack of content. Let that sink in: People who play a game where you stand in a line and shoot muskets thought Naval Action was too boring.

[Hethwill]

4 minutes ago, Lord_Sluggo said:

Let that sink in: People who play a game where you stand in a line and shoot muskets thought Naval Action was too boring.

87th Irish Fusilier here, snappy salute. ( tester and player for M&B and Warband for longer than I can remember )

War of Rights aficionado ( 69th Pa I & K  ).

Naval Action fan.

One thing does not correlate with the other, but let's breakdown your opinion into clear snippets:

- This 

- This

- also This

Makes it much easier to read than a subjective reason. Thanks

 

[Anne Wildcat]

5 minutes ago, Lord_Sluggo said:

No one gives two rips about RvR except the 200 or so super hardcore players who will love this game no matter what. For the other 99,800 who bought this game, the devs have been focusing on the wrong things for two long and it is absolutely destroying this game. I first came to Naval Action with friends from Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars. They all quit due to the lack of content. Let that sink in: People who play a game where you stand in a line and shoot muskets thought Naval Action was too boring.

This is a niche game.  It does take patience and time.  Myself, I can care less about RvR but I like hunting for PVP. Sometimes I can find some, other times not but as I don't mind the sailing and the time it takes when I play on weekends, I love this game. 

[Mrdoomed]

7 hours ago, Lady Athena said:

I decided to write in the faint hopes that someone on the dev team reads this. It echoes alot of what I hear around the servers and forums, and I feel I'm not alone in most of my impressions of the patch.

I'm not going to discuss Crafting and all of the issues with that. That alone is a whole different beast even though it does tie into everything, literally. For that go here:

I will slightly touch base on crafting to reiterate something, but that's all I'll go into it.

----------------------------------

The recent patch of Naval Action was what I'd call a tasty piece of poison in a candy wrapper. It looked sweet, I liked much of it, but in the end much of what wasn't explained fully, ruined it and completely undid all the good  I saw in the patch notes.

----------------------------------

Honestly its the economy if anything completely killing this game...

Oh boy this is a big one... No MMO like this can sustain itself without a properly balanced, engaging, and interactive economy. One that acts much like a real world economy. This is why EVE as an example works so well and has been alive and kicking for so long. If the economy didn't fluctuate, and allow for a proper push and pull and flow of goods in and out, it'd of died in the first year a decade ago. It doesn't matter how good the rest of the gameplay is, if your economy is so bad that players struggle to get even the most basic of things... You're in trouble and so is your games lifespan.

 

A good economy in a game such as this one is trying to be, needs to have a proper flow of goods. It's a "circle of life". Crafters need a good flow of goods in by traders so they can give a good flow of goods out. This allows traders to have the goods they need to trade, while making money, and crafters get the goods they need to supply the ships, upgrades, etc. the rest of the players need in a reasonable cost range.

Right now the economy is setup where you literally have walls barring the path of goods to crafters, while at the same time they're hit with a double punch to the gut now that traders are trading "Trade goods" that do nothing for the economy.

 

Now you have a broken wheel. Crafters aren't getting what they need, meanwhile traders instead of being the grease that makes the economy machine run, are sapping all the life out of it by sucking the gold out through trade goods, and giving nothing back in return. This in turn makes the prices for everything insanely high, making it extremely frustrating and disheartening for new players wanting to come in and do some combat or even play the game.

THe double punch to the gut for the player base focusing on PVP and combat is that with the 1 durability on ships now (Which I do like btw.. if the economy was fixed), they lose everything in one go. This is a massive punishment to new players who have to dish out 80k for a basic tier ship + the cannons, crew, etc. only to have a chance to lose it 30 minutes later in a fight.

---------------------------------

Pirate Faction:

Again this has been talked about to death I get it. I even wrote several posts myself over a year ago about how the pirate faction could be something.. so I wont get into it too much... Except.. There are problems, which do completely counteract the whole point of what its supposed to be, much like how the current iteration of the economy completely defeats itself for what its purpose is supposed to be. The pirate faction is no less.

WHy?

Because it quite honestly is not a pirate faction. It's a normal faction with a special trick and nothing more.

Now what the devs want idk.. They've gone back and forth so much I have no clue what they want. Do they want it historical? Or aiming to be realistic? Or do they not care? because depending on what mechanic or area of the game you look at greatly changes that idea of what they want. On one hand you have many things that are "historically accurate" where ports are.. what they're named. Ships, even the tiers and sizes and guns, etc. where things are on the map and what ports had them realistically.. Awesome... Then you get into the factions, OW, ship battle instances, and all the realism goes right out the window.

 

At the moment pirates are given 2 area's on the map, are told they can fight each other, but then are surrounded by the big boys on all sides, and to make matters worse, both pirate havens are surrounded on all sides near the main area's of 2 major factions...  Completely counter productive...

Pirates are forced then, to work together. They feel as though to survive, to make ships, to get anywhere they have to band together and work no different than any other faction. Pirates who attack other pirates are immediately shunned, hunted, harrassed, and forced off the server.

My suggestions to combat this was to remove pirate faction all together, and instead impliment some other form of how lawful a player is, unlawful players get the pirate tag. They get special bonus's for it, but, can only enter special pirate haven ports spread around the map, these area's can't be taken, and you're a pirate of a main faction, rather than in a pirate faction.

Pirates can't have guilds, but of course can still work together if they want, but this will spread them around the map. Selling loot to pirate havens gives you a huge boost to payout than through a normal port to compensate and make piracy worth it. Much more dangerous, but a chance of much bigger payouts selling the loot to pirate havens.

--------------------------

 

The open World:

 

It's been 2 years since I bought this game, and to be honest.. It's gone nowhere meaningful. Open World was a great addition, but it's..empty.. The road map has all but been forgotten, or moved around, and the remaining few things they were going to impliment is barely the start of what this game needs to make it feel worthwhile to play, with real end goals, and player interactions and guild interactions that are meaningful.

It's been 2 years of revising the same mechanics over and over and over... and somehow getting worse each time.

-----------------------------

Conclusion:

 

I can't give a pass to the devs on this absurd economy. The excuses of "well we have to see" is a cop out excuse. A good economy is not some mystery of the universe, nor is it difficult. If I throw a knife at my brother, I dont' need to "see what happens" logic, common sense, and knowledge of physics tells me exactly what's going to happen. There may be slight variations but the outcome will be relatively the same.. Economy is no different, with a little forthought, common sense, and knowledge of the most basics of economy you can come up with a system that's well balanced and only needs a few tweaks... Devs didn't get close. That's not to mistake the fact that you can tweak the current economy mechanics to "work" but.. it doesn't mean its good either.

 

In 2 years:

- Still the most basic of basic guild and faction system, one that I with less than a month of programming knowledge could code in less than half a day with additions to it.

- A worse economy than before

- Still an empty shell of an open world with no real interactions past randomly hitting random players or NPC ships cuz "reasons".

- Still the most basic of ugly UI's.... (Yes I get it, they gave bad reasons for why they haven't done anything to it.. I'm on an unfunded indie team and I can find UI artists and gfx artists to work under royalty in a matter of hours if you look and get a UI setup in a game in the next few weeks.. It's not difficult. It's lazy. I can't give them a pass on this either).

- Tooltips and UI information still completely nonsensical and unhelpful to new players (This is why tooltips exist.. to help the new players.. not old players who already know it and just need a little reminder). Hovering over an item I should not see Cannon_Center_Accuracy_(insert more nonsensical crap) .4   There's some tooltips that are so wtf when you read it only a person who's tested it knows wtf it does. No excuse for this lack of basic information, in a setup that's nonsensical and unhelpful.

Same goes for cannons on Ships. 4-5/5-6 means NOTHING to new players, if you have to ask what information on the screen is telling you, and even then after knowing its easy to forget, and or can be easily mixed up... You massively messed up... This is important information to a player and shouldn't be given in such nonsensical ways.

Again I cannot give a pass on the devs for this.

 

This and other issues that have no reason for being with a competent dev team has made me put the naval action game on the shelf once again for a year, and maybe forever.. In 2 years this is the best we can hope for is not a shining beacon or even a small candle in a strong wind of a hope of this game becoming something worth playing. I'll be telling friends to avoid this game completely, which is unfortunate.. I wanted to love it. I supported the devs and gave them the benefit of the doubt for 2 years and running... Yet.... They have only themselves to blame.

 

 

 

 

 

No cooldown teleports ruined this game and exacerbate every would be small problem into a giant game killing problem. 

I still cant believe they havent done away with free teleport at will gimicky bs. Its so clear that since they started allowing it things got worse and have never recovered. 

And yes it even messes up the economy.  Hard to create or maintain an economy where people can have as many alts as they want and set up resorce buildings anywhere and teleport at will between them and hyperinflate any resorces they want.

How can you have an econ with this?

Edited May 29, 2017 by Mrdoomed

[Lord_Sluggo]

47 minutes ago, Anne Wildcat said:

This is a niche game.  It does take patience and time.  Myself, I can care less about RvR but I like hunting for PVP. Sometimes I can find some, other times not but as I don't mind the sailing and the time it takes when I play on weekends, I love this game. 

This game is a 'niche' game because the target audience appears to be 70 year-old retirees with unlimited free time to play and grind. The past 20 years have seen an explosion in the popularity of historical fiction. Look at Black Sails. Look at Assassin's Creed. Look at Pirates of the Freaking Caribbean. There is a market for a game where wooden ships shoot each other with cannons and make each other blow up. The problem isn't that this game is set in the Age of Sail, the problem is that the dev team has no idea what they want or how to go about it in a way that is fun and engaging.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Lord_Sluggo

[monk33y]

I love how the once silver spoon ❄ are up in arms 

[Lady Athena]

1 hour ago, monk33y said:

I love how the once silver spoon ❄ are up in arms 

Props to you for being such an obvious forum troll and attempting to incite flaming and derailing, and haven't been banned yet.

[Lady Athena]

1 hour ago, Mrdoomed said:

No cooldown teleports ruined this game and exacerbate every would be small problem into a giant game killing problem. 

I still cant believe they havent done away with free teleport at will gimicky bs. Its so clear that since they started allowing it things got worse and have never recovered. 

And yes it even messes up the economy.  Hard to create or maintain an economy where people can have as many alts as they want and set up resorce buildings anywhere and teleport at will between them and hyperinflate any resorces they want.

How can you have an econ with this?

Ah yea, you know. I never messed with the teleports, but you're absolutely right. Idk how I missed that.

[monk33y]

Not a troll, I know that there is presented now where epic crying gets you whatever you want.

I just don't like how everyone is up in arms over changes that have introduced ballance and an even playing field.. 

The games now hard. But importantly not impossible...

[Lady Athena]

 

10 hours ago, monk33y said:

Not a troll, I know that there is presented now where epic crying gets you whatever you want.

I just don't like how everyone is up in arms over changes that have introduced ballance and an even playing field.. 

The games now hard. But importantly not impossible...

13 hours ago, monk33y said:

I love how the once silver spoon ❄ are up in arms 

^ This is nothing short of being a troll. It's a comment that mirrors most of what you write, which does nothing but provoke people to argue, with no basis or logic behind it, and nothing brought forward in a constructive manner at all. It's nothing but you attempting to be insulting and prod people with. That's being a troll. No two ways around it.

 

Secondly, if you think this economy is balanced you have no clue what you're talking about, or what makes a properly balanced economy. Nobody is asking it to be stupendously easy.

I could give you an economy even worse than this, where it takes 10 years to get brig. By your mentality and standards that's a balanced economy that works, and is fine. Because its not impossible, just takes a long time.

Unfortunately it appears you don't understand why this is a bad thing, which means you're a waste of everyone's time and I'm not about to waste my time trying to explain it to someone who's head is quite obviously not screwed on straight. 

Everything you've typed (and most of what you type on this forums) is nothing short of useless dribble aiming to incite a flame/insult war. So before you type, think. Is what I'm typing worth something to the discussion, or the person I'm responding too? Is it constructive? Or at least somewhat touches base on what is being discussed and can help bring the discussion to a conclusion? If no, then stop. Don't type. Nobody cares about your worthless dribble you type. 

[Benass]

There is no balance in building a ship to loosing it in action.

 

It takes way to much effort to build a ship and only 5 min to loose it.

Im wondering all those hardcore pvper what ships they gona pvp in, and how many battles per 24h will be?  

The basic mats doesnt add up.

 

Its like  2+2 = -100