Server Health is a Game Design Issue

[vazco]

13 hours ago, admin said:

(...)

Please revise your communication strategy. Asking for good reviews with "or else" is what created a wave of bad reviews. It wasn't a coincident, it would happen every time. 10 people will listen to you, while 1 will create a shitstorm that results in much worse than those 10 reviews.

You're not just a member of this community, you have much more responsible role. Your words will always be exaggerated. As such, you shouldn't definitely talk about Legends here, mentioning "they will be better for some players". Not until they're launched. A few companies went broke due to such strategy.

I'm in a somewhat similar role (not here luckily ) and it's crazy how careful you have to be with using your words. You can't change the community or humanity, only yourself and your interactions with the community.

Edited August 16, 2017 by vazco

[admin]

11 hours ago, Cockeyed Callaway said:

I will be as diplomatic as possible here and suggest that the reason many an "ass has been lifted from their chair" but toward the negative side, may be due to statements such as this. How many people have been banned because of statement that are negative or misunderstood by the developers on these forums? 

 I have to be honest, it is not a "two way street." You are the service provider and we are your customers. Any business that blames its customer needs to reassess its business model.

 

This is a developer forum - where our critics also do not hold themselves in open expressions of criticism. We value that openness and directness (unless it crosses the line and don't turn to direct abuse or personal attack). The statement " developers should lift their ass from the chair and add more ships" - would be completely valid and will not be moderated or censored. 

[Duncan McFail]

4 minutes ago, vazco said:

Please revise your communication strategy. Asking for good reviews with "or else" is what created a wave of bad reviews. It wasn't a coincident, it would happen every time. 10 people will listen to you, while 1 will create a shitstorm that results in much worse than those 10 reviews.

You're not just a member of this community, you have much more responsible role. Your words will always be exaggerated. As such, you shouldn't definitely talk about Legends here, mentioning "they will be better for some players". Not until they're launched. A few companies went broke due to such strategy.

I'm in a somewhat similar role (not here luckily ) and it's crazy how careful you have to be with using your words. You can't change the community or humanity, only yourself and your interactions with the community.

Easy questions. You have a steam review up, is it good or bad, and do you currently play the game?

[admin]

9 hours ago, Wang said:

You guys have never been open to criticism, every forum post you i see you guys post.  

Your post is there and is not moderated.

There is a difference between 

• First statement: Developers are scamming liars and dumb idiots favoring russians/british/danish/swedish by opening adding pay2win transactions to naval action and providing special content for fascist/nazi moderators.
  • and
• Second statement: Developers are lazy as they don't add content and don't listen to me. 

The person making first statement will get ignored and eventually banned
The person making second statement is still here and posts occasionally without any censorship

We don't understand the reasons for your statement - maybe you were in a certain echo chamber or fake news affect people more and spread faster.. 
 

[vazco]

7 minutes ago, Duncan McFail said:

Easy questions. You have a steam review up, is it good or bad, and do you currently play the game?

Mine is good, and I play the game. I also bought other games of GL. I have higher tolerance to miscommunication than an average community member though. I understand how people can give a bad review just because they feel they've been treated unfairly, or because they feel devs are not open to criticism. It's not about the game for probably most of bad reviews, but about bad relation they feel they have with developers.

Devs in NA have bad opinion, even though they actually try hard to listen to the community and make game better. In my opinion it's all about communication and acting from a position of power from time to time, instead of a "servant leader".

[Rychu Karas]

7 hours ago, Teutonic said:

I've said it before. 1 dura was a good decision, but the other changes that came with it made it into a bad decision. I am with koltes here, if prices, production, and grind could be adjusted in FAVOR of making it easier for everyone to get ships, then 1 dura could finally work.

At this point what has happened was that we lost multiple dura but made everything more expensive, longer production lines, and "grindier" than ever to get the same ship.

Exactly, not the idea is bad but the way of implementation in the game.

[Duncan McFail]

32 minutes ago, vazco said:

Mine is good, and I play the game. I also bought other games of GL. I have higher tolerance to miscommunication than an average community member though. I understand how people can give a bad review just because they feel they've been treated unfairly, or because they feel devs are not open to criticism. It's not about the game for probably most of bad reviews, but about bad relation they feel they have with developers.

Devs in NA have bad opinion, even though they actually try hard to listen to the community and make game better. In my opinion it's all about communication and acting from a position of power from time to time, instead of a "servant leader".

I think the devs/mods attitude toward us has come a long way. There was a time when putting the game down got you forum banned. They seem much more open to suggestion and much more tolerant of the game they work on. There's not many of the negative reviews recently mentioning dev attitude no have i seen it recently. With comments on you last post admin would have went off on you 3 months ago. But now it's a less aggressive debate you see. We just need to voice our opinions, give feedback, and be patient with patches that take awhile. Especially when they have a lot of work with the Unity 5 upgrade.

[Hethwill]

Voicing opinions in a civil, well written and structured way never got anyone being disciplined.

[Fargo]

6 hours ago, koltes said:

I think that 7th rates needs to be dirt cheap to buy or craft.

6th rate are easily affordable to craft hence player price will keep low.

5th rates are bread and butter of open waters should be a bit easier to craft as it is now thus reducing the price for them costing at most 100k for the ship with best woods setups. 

4th rates should be where they are. Those are big ships and needs certain investment. 500-750k in a shop is a fair price.

SOLs needs to be given purpose. PBs that no one showing up to is not enough. Lineship PBs needs to have SOLs slots so 3rd and 2nd rates are used too. 3rd rates 1-1,5mil is a fair price. 2nd rate is 1,5-2mil. 1st rate should be around 2-4 mil mark total including canons and upgrades

Upgrades needs to have a fair cost, but not hard to replace. We arw no longer caring about ship loss, but mainly rare upgradez loss. All upgrades needs to be easily availabe to craft. Resources for their production plentiful. Permanent upgrades needs to be just costly in comparison to the ship (maybe double the price of the ship when installed), but something that you dont have to use to sail the ship well and be competitive.

Cannons should require less Iron and Coal or both of these resources reduced in price to gather, thus making cannons production significantly cheaper.

Thats it. Dura is not a problem. Its how it goes along with the rest mechanics

See, thats what im talking about. Youre just offering opinions, claiming to know the truth. Other people stopped playing after they owned 15+ valuable ships and millions. How does this fit this picture. Its not our job to tweak cost balancing. To do this you need to observe what people own after certain times, for lots of people. Then lots of other stuff is effecting how expensive ships appear to be, and lots of stuff needs changes aswell. The only productive way to define cost for something is to do it in time. How long should people need to play on average for a 5th rate.

If we would focus on realism and "hardcore", like the steam description says, most of your suggestions wouldnt fit in NA. If you think about specific slots for specific ships, it makes absolutely no sense. Talking about cost/progress again, someone needs to define "hardcore". Long time motivation is what the NA legends fraction is not thinking about, i guess youre on of them too. Currently i dont see any kind of motivation in NA. Take the rank progress, do you think its fine? Not important, the result is important. Reality is that nearly everyone is max rank. Is this a problem? If it should provide some long time motivation, yes. And whats the reason for ranks, if not to motivate? Less people on max rank also would affect the 1st rate only issue, in a natural way. 

One dura is never a Problem, it has nothing to do with ship cost. You can make ships as expensive or cheap as you want, no matter the durability. Thats like increasing the stern size of all ships to increase rake damage, instead of just increasing rake damage. Totally out of question, so is one dura.

[Duncan McFail]

16 minutes ago, Fargo said:

See, thats what im talking about. Youre just offering opinions, claiming to know the truth. Other people stopped playing after they owned 15+ valuable ships and millions. How does this fit this picture. Its not our job to tweak cost balancing. To do this you need to observe what people own after certain times, for lots of people. Then lots of other stuff is effecting how expensive ships appear to be, and lots of stuff needs changes aswell. The only productive way to define cost for something is to do it in time. How long should people need to play on average for a 5th rate.

If we would focus on realism and "hardcore", like the steam description says, most of your suggestions wouldnt fit in NA. If you think about specific slots for specific ships, it makes absolutely no sense. Talking about cost/progress again, someone needs to define "hardcore". Long time motivation is what the NA legends fraction is not thinking about, i guess youre on of them too. Currently i dont see any kind of motivation in NA. Take the rank progress, do you think its fine? Not important, the result is important. Reality is that nearly everyone is max rank. Is this a problem? If it should provide some long time motivation, yes. And whats the reason for ranks, if not to motivate? Less people on max rank also would affect the 1st rate only issue, in a natural way. 

One dura is never a Problem, it has nothing to do with ship cost. You can make ships as expensive or cheap as you want, no matter the durability. Thats like increasing the stern size of all ships to increase rake damage, instead of just increasing rake damage. Totally out of question, so is one dura.

I like the the 1 dura ships. My only problem was the costs increased for 1 dura ships vs 5 duras and that makes things too hardcore. Now people are afraid to risk their ships. If I wanted a simple synonym for hardcore I'd go with great or a lot of. Like the hardcore grind to unlock slots on ships or now that tp's and deliveries are out between free towns you have a hardcore travel distance to get to a national port. I don't mind most of the hardcore, but I dislike hardcore grind. I had a nice system for hardcore leveling. More of a move up on kill move down on death. 

But I would like to see ship costs drop due to tweaking with sub-component labor costs. I think it would get people a little less afraid of risking ships. I also wish we had a better system for dock space. I'm always out of space.

[WMvD]

This! Everything else is vanity!

[Hethwill]

Just now, Duncan McFail said:

Now people are afraid to risk their ships.

Now ? Sorry sir, seen avoidance to fight and loss since Trials. It has nothing to do with game mechanics but totally dependent on human psyche.

Totally agree on the economic side of things. It is not how ships are built but how resources and materials are gathered IMO.

[WMvD]

On ‎12‎-‎8‎-‎2017 at 1:54 AM, Mike the Mongel said:

The game is no longer player friendly to 75% of players.. the 25% or less hardcore gamers who spend 8 to 10 hours a day into a game is not who the Devs need to be feeding to or listening too, maybe find that happy middle ground.

Currently the game and its hardcore (what I mean by hardcore is the time needed ingame a day grinding) mechanics are what is running people off, I have seen countless replies to other threads pointing fingers at certain clans or individuals, but the bigger picture is the game is not casual player friendly and due to the casual gamer allways being behind the curve when they log back in...the interest in staying with the game dwindles...hell I am now a casual gamer due to work changes and family and I am now currently fighting the urge to not leave the game.

PvP...peeps scream about lack of PvP now, but the mechanics/changes do not encourage PvP..it only makes peeps want to stay away from losing their ships.......

1 Dura..yes good for the hardcore gamer, he or she can replenish it quickly, but your major playerbase has not the time....fix it by allowing players to purchase insurance  or something or even 3 Dura for 4th Rates and higher as most PvP are within those areas as an example.....don't let the hardcore low percentage ruin your amazing game that can have a future.

Cost to get established or even setup as a newbie is just way over the top, and due to the Players who camp at capitals for carebear PvP it ruins the gameplay and the newest players say screw it.

RvR has no direction and still the Pirates are left out in the cold with no real direction on how the Pirates actually are part of the game.....

 

Unity 5 will not fix the game mechanics as of late, gents seriously the game has went from fun to feeling like a job to pulling teeth to want to stay logged in .

This! everything else is vanity!

[Magnum]

The main thing about EVE that I like that NA fails miserably at is -- the way you instantiate (start) a battle! in EVE you "see" your opponent electronically (it's called local) and the cat and mouse game is on - the real cool part is you are never quite sure who is the cat and who is the mouse.

I no longer play NA - I'll likely try legends to see if it rekindles that joy I felt during Sea Trials, but barring a major overhaul I'm out of OW.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Magnum

[Hethwill]

EVE is 1:1 right ? No combat separate instance ?

[Duncan McFail]

7 minutes ago, Magnum said:

The main thing about EVE that I like that NA fails miserably at is -- the way you instantiate (start) a battle! You "see" your opponent electronically (it's called local) and the cat and mouse game is on - the real cool part is you are never quite sure who is the cat and who is the mouse.

I no longer play NA - I'll likely try legends to see if it rekindles that joy I felt during Sea Trials, but barring a major overhaul I'm out of OW.

What is it about the OW NA you don't like specifically?

[Simon Cadete]

In my opinion, the biggest problem with this game is that is meant for hardcore players who have the time and multiple accounts to play it. I used to be one of them. 

Most players have to be considered casual and can only play a few hours at a time. The time it takes to sail around doing nothing is amazing. 

I think ow is past the point of recovering. It has lost too much of its player base and it won't get it back in my opinion. The game has been the same for over a year with some number tweaking and back and forth with broken mechanics.

I suggest you put all your efforts in Legends and use Naval Action's greatest strength ( combat) to its fullest. I suggest even trying the console market where you'll get a lot of players.

OW is in hospice mode. Just let it go in peace. 

[Hethwill]

It is a individual choice sir. Let it go in peace of mind if you must.

 

 

[balticsailor]

For me personaly the current iteration of NA is the least fun one in a long time (and i play since Sea Trail) atm i only play a bit of eco to be ready if the game becomes more fun again.

While i like the new Wood Types and the Idea with the shipkowledge i find some of the other changes half-heartedly or oppositional.

For exsamble you intcreased gun dmg and reduced HP and thickniss to make battles faster, but then also introduce multiple of 30% HP, that prolong the fight and make them repeat (why do i have to chain or demast the guy till he runs out of rep to finaly catch him?). Also multi rep benefit the stronger side more then the weaker side so make the scaling of unbalanced fight even worse.

You want to get rip of expensvie upgrades with the new ship knowledge, but then you come up with the new more expensvie and even harder to get refits (some of then cost 1-3x the price of a ship) and make the best skillbooks only as rng drops. Also quite alot of the skill books are very unbalanced (benefit per slot so to say) for exsample the Art of Ship Handling or Book of Five Rings vs Trim by the Stern.

As long as the skill books give you so big befits your are kind of forced to grind out your ship with PvE if you want to do PvP, even more so since the exp reward for PvP is a joke compared to the time need to get any kills (good luck chaining anyone down enough to catch up with them as long as they still have repairs). Also why can't at least ships of the same size share some exp, it is not like you learn that much new stuff if you sail a ingermanland instead of a wappen or a Aga or a P. Frigate instead of Cherubin or a Belle Poule? Also it doesn#t realy make sense that the sailing exp doesn't count to the shipsknowledge.

Just a few thing that bother me in NA atm and came to mind while reading here.

[Cmdr RideZ]

On 8/15/2017 at 10:52 AM, admin said:

1. Remember that all ow features and 50% of combat features are in game because of player suggestions. Its purely a player driven game. We never stopped trying. 

2. Game will have only once chance to make a first impression on future release with better UI and localization

3. But if community demands something MORE than promised content they should give back something in return. Which is help in managing player expectations until we fix the game problems and help in providing alternative voice to haters. It IS community responsibility to help new players understand why changes are done all the time and what we are trying to achieve here. 
 

1. Does not really feel player driven at all

I do not honestly know who were those community members you listened to do these changes.  I have never read about this radical changes.  I know some guys who can read the closed tester forum, I understood this was a surprise for them as well.  So from which community we are talking?

 

2. First impression was really good, for me.  It is the future I am worried about.  For you I hope you are right, but I do not agree.  You sure need both things, but not sure if that is going to safe you.  I think you need those 10h players stay longer and I believe you are going to opposite direction.  I am not your oldest community.  Guy that told me from Naval Action quit the game long time ago.  He was simply not interested to craft and trade, he wanted an adventure.

 

3. You are trying to achieve something your old community does not agree with.  I am not going to be here either and neither will be all I know, many of them actually left long time ago.  You need plenty of new members in you community to help you, as old one will just write their frustrations in reviews.  Finding those players will be hard as old ones are trashing your game.

 

...

About the economy...

A. If you make economy too heavy -> Serfdom.

B. If you make economy too light -> Everything will lose a meaning, removes "depth" that OW creates.

Some like A, others like B.  Somewhere there in the middle is probably the right spot.  I only know that economy should be lighter than what it was in Tournament 2016, as that time people were already too afraid to lose ships.

 

(Ship + Crew + Upgrades + Books + Cannons + Repair Kits + Time it takes to acquire these - Losers reward) / Durability = Death Penalty ~= How heavy economy is.

I am assuming player to be somewhat competitive in that ship.

Serfdom comes from continuous grind to get that ship and be able to lose that one after another.  In PvP you lose ships, someone else is losing ships, 10h players are losing faster than we can imagine.  All of them should be able to spend most of their time in fun stuff, which often means PvP.

4 friends make a sailing trip after heavy day at work, one friend sinks in a battle.  If they want to continue their evening, they have to wait/help that one to get back.  1dura ships + removing teleport increased "Time to Combat" considerable amount.  How fast your economy can provide a new ship, how fast are they back together and in action?

We all want to make war, not serfdom.

 

There is a successful game company from 1975, that has a slogan that is famous and has been keeping them going all these years...

In the grim darkness of the age of sail, there is only war.

[Fargo]

22 hours ago, admin said:

We do insist that community can do a bit more in terms of explaining to players on what we are doing and why. All the changes we did had the goal to make the game better (not to destroy it). Too many changes and too drastic changes is a reason for negativity. 

Its hard to explain nonesense. If decisions would be well reasoned, people had no reason to be negative. But when you cant justify what youre doin, how are we supposed to do it?! Why dont you start to make purposeful decisions, based on what the game was supposed to be.

And dont fool us. Youre saying your experimenting and tweaking alot. The last patch was 3 weeks ago. Besides capturable ships beeing nonesense, nothing new. No important tweaks. Patches before you fiddled around with marks, without changing the mark system itself, that cant work as it is. No experiments, no relevant tweaks.

We should really have a functional Economy and well-conceived RoE by now, as a foundation for anything else. But we still have the basic systems we had 3+ years ago. Also we still have the same balancing issues we had back then. It even became worse. This wouldnt be the case, if constant experiments and tweaks would have happened over years. Nothing happened.

[Hodo]

4 hours ago, The Red Duke said:

EVE is 1:1 right ? No combat separate instance ?

Technically, Eve is instanced per region.   So once you enter a region you are in that instance for the whole region.  IF you really wanted you could cross the region at the speed of sublight which would take hours if not a day or two if you did in game.  

But there are FTL options in Eve which cuts the size of the region down greatly.   If my scales are correct I think one region in EVE is about the size of Cuba and the Bahamas in game.

[Hethwill]

Just now, Hodo said:

Technically, Eve is instanced per region.   So once you enter a region you are in that instance for the whole region.  IF you really wanted you could cross the region at the speed of sublight which would take hours if not a day or two if you did in game.  

But there are FTL options in Eve which cuts the size of the region down greatly.   If my scales are correct I think one region in EVE is about the size of Cuba and the Bahamas in game.

Thanks. So if NA would even compare, combat wise, each region would be 1:1 scale. Alas it isn't so we must rely on what we see at any given moment...

[Demsity]

To all captains complaining that a casual player cannot play this game: 

I´m a casual player. I have a full-time job, a part time job, a wife and one kid. I can play 0-4 hours per day, maybe more on the weekends.
I play solo, no clan to back me up (I was in a clan but I was really passive, helping the clan craft stuff but never asking for anything in return.) I participate in portbattle screenings, coast guarding  and what I do most, solo hunt in enemy waters.

I don´t care if I have the best refits, books or if I have unlocked all the knowledge slots. I can still do all the things that I do. I have a set amount of gold that I strive to have at all times, so I can replace ships should I sink. If i´m lacking in gold I either grind or craft something, mostly cannons and put them on contract.

My point is that the grind is what you make of it. In an MMORPG, say EVE or WOW, to become the best takes serious time and effort. Like it´s supposed to do! You can still enjoy the game without the best books, refits or all knowledge slots.

It pisses me off that people claims to talk for all casual players, when its absurdly not true.

*edit2* I should mention that I started playing for real after the wipe. I had 2-3 hours in the game before the wipe.

For the Devs:

 

I think that an ingame shop, for real money, for cosmetics is a really good way to go. It gives you incentive to keep develop the game and gives the players some highly requested  cosmetic stuff. I do think that the premium currency should be able to be obtained by playing the game. For example if you as a player make it on the PVP leaderboard, you get some premium currency.

*edit* Maybe even link it to NA:Legends? Win a match in legends and get some small amount of premium currency. Maybe it can be shared between the two games?

Edited August 16, 2017 by Demsity

[Hodo]

57 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

Thanks. So if NA would even compare, combat wise, each region would be 1:1 scale. Alas it isn't so we must rely on what we see at any given moment...

Both have their pros and cons.  I like NAs system if it was more WYSIWYG in battle instances.  But to many people cried about it.   But I also think the only people who should be able to join a battle are those in sight of the battle when it starts.  And when they join they should be further away from the start point respective of the direction from sail.   The join circle should be more like the join circle for port battles.  One big circle with the option join as X nation or join as Y nation.