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The cost and effort required to play this game is to much


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I also have some serious issues with this game right now and the only reason I'm still playing is because I hope change is coming soon. This was inspired by @Crayon and his thread "Final Suggestion". I started writing this as a reply to his post, but then this wall of text appeared so I decided to make a suggestion of my own.

Issue 1: Sailing is to time consuming
I love the OW part of this game, but when ship TP was totally removed sailing time increased to much. We should have gotten to keep the after maintenance tow of empty ships between national ports. That is a hard one to exploit and it provides us with a reason to RvR (take a region near a PvP hotspot = you players get content).

Issue 2: The cost of it all and the grind to cover it

The cost of ships is to expensive, but I like the permits. It limits the use of over-sized ships in OW. Some will say that it takes to much materials to craft the ships when we consider that they only have 1 durability, but that is only because we compare it with how it was pre wipe. The main issues as I see it is in the cost of crafting the resources together with the insane amounts we need of Fir, Oak, iron, and hemp it to make the materials. Then add that is is a extreme grind to make gold at the moment and the fun is lost. Because we all need ships, cannons, crew, hull repair, rig repair and rum. Collecting half of the resources I need to be able to craft this is extremely expensive, I think I need around 500.000 gold to empty out fir log, oak log and iron ore building once, those are level 1!  And you need huge amounts of iron ore, fir log and oak log. 

I lose ships with repairs and cannons on them, all the time! This is forcing me to spend way to much time grinding and trading. I used to like grinding because it was something relaxing I could do on my own or with my clan mates, and it would give me the gold I needed to buy the shit I wanted for PvP.  Back then I crafted my own ships to, it was easy in the good old days. I even used to enjoy trading once in a while to mix thing up a bit.. Now there is no option, I have to grind until I'm sick of it and then go out and trade. I do not want to be forced to do this. The game is no longer fun.. It is broken!

Issue 3: It is not easy to compete with free stuff

Yes we got back the option to capture AI ships up to 5. rate and that is great, but this was necessary because the cost of crafting ships and cannons was not properly balanced in the first place. And we no longer have enough players to have healthy price competition in the marked. But now all the crafters who make and sell ships (7. - 5. rates) in the nation marked while they try to rank up their crafting level has to compete with captured ships. That is free ships that include cannons and loot opportunity.. It is not easy to compete with that!

Issue 4: PvP is a unrewarding gold and time sink, unless you are a ganking-son-of-a-bau-itch

The repair meta is making it very hard to kill good opponents when they have the skill books and upgrades to buff repair. And if they have more players than you do, I would say it is almost impossible. The days of losing 25 ships in PBs are over, just not possible unless they all decide on committing suicide. Because the hull, sail and rum repairs are so OP! And we can use them unlimited amounts of times with a cool down, and bring way to much repairs with us.
So after most of my PvP battles I get 0 gold and 0 xp. Either I just lost a ship or the hello kittytard I was fighting understood what was about to happen and escaped. Only time I get a reward from PvP is when I'm with other players and we have the BR advantage. This is forcing us to gank, often single players that are new to the game. This is a part of the game that is destroying the player base.. And if the only way I can be rewarded for PvP is if we gank players, then I don't want to do OW PvP anymore.

I understand that the devs wanted to make the PvP system less exploitable for players who are farming their alt accounts. The problem is that now the OW PvP part of the game is unbearable for some of us. So it is basicly killing of the new and old players at the same time..  I do not have a solution for this, but by starting to correct some of the issues over here would seriously help imo. 

Ideas to help with these issues:

To be honest regarding repair I preferred the old 1 repair for hull and 1 for sail system, with no magic comeback for crew.  Balancing the system we have now is not easy, but if I had to try I would increase the weight of hull and rigg repair to 2 weight per repair and rum to 0.5 weight. That way we can not bring so much and it is a more a tactical choice what we bring and how much.
Then I would nerf the stock repair percentage it self by half or increase the cool down to 20 minutes. Or preferably a little bit of both, so 15 min cool down and reduce the health repair to 2/3 of what is is now.

I would like to have the material needed for the normal PvP and newbie ships and cannons reduced. 7. rate and up to 5. rates. This is needed for crafters to be able to compete better with the option to capture ships, to lower the cost of ships for use by new players and to help reduce the cost/risk in PvP.

Reduce the cost of crafting resources to 25% of what it is now or increase the gold we get from PvE, a lot (a a balance is needed). A balance I would like to see is 1 hour PvE grinding (in the Indefatigable, 2 fleet missions) should be enough to get you all the resources for a Frigate with cannons, repairs and rum. If you make that in to 1,5 hour PvE grind you should have enough gold for resources to buy what ever wood combo you want Trinco with long cannons, 100 rigg repairs, 100 hull repairs and 250 rum. I'm guessing the cost for all of this just in resources is around 300.000 gold. So this would add up to 5. rate fleet missions should pay out 100.000 gold net (after repair and crew). Some of you will say that this is to much and to easy, and we would get a inflation for sure. But IMO it is time to go to the other extreme again, because what we have now is not working. I also think that grinding PvE should be close to as rewarding as trading is. That way the player can chose what he wants to do, and not be forced to trade/afk sail around the map.

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I can sort of agree. Since having started my fulltime job, I barely play the game anymore. When getting home at 7pm, i just dont have the spare time anymore to sail the OW and spending 3/4 or even more of the time "playing" just sailing around doing nothing. Ive got 2-3 hours a day I can spend on games. I prefer spending that time by actually doing something, so I moved to other games for the time being. I hope NA Legends will suit my preferences better :)

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The truth has been spoken!

Please devs, I beg you to take the time to actually listen to your respected veterans like Sir Tiedemann and Liquicity. If even the hardcore players say the game is at the moment too much, I fear you will lose the few veterans players who actually try to make other players stay on the game. If they lose hope, I truly believe others will as well.

Try to keep in mind the words of Helen Keller : "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope [...].". For instance, the unrewarding PVP system and the high cost of harvesting resources are enough to undermine our optimism.

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Great points, been playing for year and a half myself and i keep hoping. patience is running out and new games are coming out.

this is quite possibly the game with the most potential ever but failed because the devs just couldn't find the right recipe. good news is that the devs seem to be realizing they need radical changes for ow sandbox game. my opinion.

1. game needs a central high security NPC area for carebears, and losers to regroup in safety while the rest of 90% of the map is anything goes player owned ports and empires

2. ow speed is fine but they need to give us options for teleports

3. battle repairs make battles too long and drawn out i think it would be more fun if battles were half as long and making critical sailing mistakes cost you big time.

4. create trade wind spots for cross map travel, you know those areas will be hot spots for pvp. so yes you will have option for fast travel with them but at risk and it would bring people together for pvp zones.

5. want to limit ships of the line? make them have a maintenance cost weekly or monthly. that way SOLs become expensive, special use ships that likely need clan teamwork to use.and they cant be horded to the point of more SOLs sailing around than 4th and 5th rates.

6. expand the map, make the whole damn world full of ports for players to explore, conquer make player empires to fight over and trade. trade wind spots (see above)will help make the world accessible but dangerous

7. get rid of port regions, make it so every single port has to be fight over. except in high security area of npc ports that cant be conquered. (see above about high security npc area)

8. get rid of the marks system , its just unbalanced and will be tweaked for years to come and annoying. just make SOLs have a maintenance cost to own. 4th rates have to be crafted and are the average big battle ships, and 5th rates and below can be captured by npc etc. kind of like you have it now but SOL's need more limiting.

9. make the map fog and you have to explore the map to remove the fog. except in the high security npc area. also create treasures and exploration goodies to encourage exploration of the map.

10. allow players take take over ports and OWN them, and have new mechanics where players can shape the port the way they want with taxes, defenses, resources etc, the players govern the ports they own and create their own port empires. 90%of the maps ports would belong to player empires in a dog eat dog open world. while a small central area or europe map would be high security area for carebears, low profit and for losers to fall back and rebuild.

11. along with great port battles, incorporate a land army mechanic that can be basic but would add a much needed dimension to taking over and holding ports. having a standing army. that way armies would need to be transported to take over a port. right now its just navy ships taking p orts, its not realistic or immersive. lets make it so you have to land troops too and you need enough troops to take a port and of course ships support is a big part of the battle.

12. make paint a pay to gain item so we can support the devs with real money and get options for customizing our ships.

13. LET US NAME OUR SHIPS! for gods sake this is a immersive ship game, no ship is complete without its own name! it doesn't have to be seen globally it could be just for your client side so you can tell which ship is which.

14. fix the ui and give us a freaking background of a ship or port instead of the god awful blue screen in port. make the sliders for crafting much greater too, its  annoying and unnecessary to have to click dozens of times to finish a large crafting order.

 

just some of my ideas. at the end of the day the devs have to live with what they do while i can just go on to another game. so i wish them the best of luck, we are all counting on them :)

 

 

Edited by Rebel Witch
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