Server Health is a Game Design Issue

[Teutonic]

I've said it before:

-- I was one of the biggest supporters for 1 Durability, but ONLY if it made all ships cheaper. Instead we got ships with 1 durability, ships stayed the same price and in fact got more expensive due to cannons and that you need X amounts per deck.

-- I have been a constant supporter to LIMIT BR in a Port Battle. It would create varying ranges of ships INSTEAD of the boring 25 1st rate show up.

In my honest opinion the next patch seems promising but we need to honestly go and discuss what we really want. Some us of are all gungho about a hardcore game with real loss.... but we can still have real loss without a hardcore game and at least from me it's clear that the harsh penalties currently in the game have made the recent players, the ones I would argue are the most hardcore, leave....or take an extended break.

1. Ships need to become cheaper (conversely Lineships to become more expensive). When I look at material cost of current ships, why would I ever again, waste resources on a 5th rate when I could just get a 4th or 3rd rate that can do what the 5th rate does....but better in all aspects?

2. Port Battles must have battle rating limits. Make the players take the choice of a few very powerful ships, a combination of ships, or many lighters ships that can overwhelm a smaller group.

3. Knowledge slots - I really, really hate the fact that we were told it wouldn't be an RNG mechanic and then to only find out that you need to kill NPCs and grind them (loot them) to find knowledge slots....essentially making it RNG. One guy may have all the books and yet here I am still grinding away trying to find them. I thought this was supposed to give everyone a more even playing field and instead it is creating the same problem. Some books sell for millions, other books are just absolutely worthless and why ever use them.

4. Buildings - There has to be a change here. extracting resources should not cost both money AND labor, choose one.

5. Crafting - The decision to make players ONLY gain experience for crafting ships may be logically sound, but in a game it's Extremely depressing. You go to a player and tell them the only way to get a higher crafting level is to craft ships. Go ahead, I've done it and they get irritated, not necessarily at me, but at the fact that they could craft thousands of carriages or planks or frames and they get absolutely nothing for it. On top of the fact that when it comes to a clan and efficiency, it's more efficient to have higher level players craft ships, so why would you encourage those with lower levels to craft when you already have the crafters. This needs to be addressed.

Lastly, Others would disagree with me here but I believe new Ships really are extra content and would love to see them after this Unity 5 implementation.

[Christendom]

6 hours ago, admin said:

We are trying and trying hard to fix problems and experiment/experiment/experiment… 
yet when new people ask - should they get this game - they get this in response

http://steamcommunity.com/app/311310/discussions/1/1471967615873119233/

Its hard to bring new users when there is not a single positive voice on steam. How can you increase online when every answer to the question - "should i get it" - is "NO"?

Quite frankly, in it's current state the game isn't really all that recommendable for new people.  You replied to a post of mine about the new player experience and a new US based clan that petty much all quit.  These players bought the game during the steam sale based off of good reviews (via a streamer) and then they ended up quitting due to the new player experience, or lack of one I should say.  

If someone asked me today if I should purchase the game, I'd probably tell them no also.  We have too many servers, not enough players to fill them and the grind/time investment to get into this game is just too damn high.  

The only way to fix the problem of players not recommending your game on steam is to give them a game worth recommending.  

Edited August 14, 2017 by Christendom

[Helbent]

22 minutes ago, Christendom said:

If someone asked me today if I should purchase the game, I'd probably tell them no also.  We have too many servers, not enough players to fill them and the grind/time investment to get into this game is just too damn high.  

The only way to fix the problem of players not recommending your game on steam is to give them a game worth recommending.  

While I agree we don't have enough players currently to fill the servers, saying we wouldn't recommend the game to someone because of that is self-defeating. No way to fill the servers without getting people in.

That said, I agree in its current state the game has a terrible new player experience. The learning curve is very steep, and if a new player doesn't get hooked up with some people in nation that can help them get on their feet then they likely won't stick around long. I would say that as many issues as there are with the late game which causes many of the complaints on steam the new player experience needs to be the top priority for the devs to fix. I would guess 95% of the people who bought the game during the summer sale quit before they got to rank 3, and never experienced most of the issues the vets complain about on a daily basis. Fixing the late game may help with the bleed of vet players (and may even bring vet players back), but it won't fix the stability issues of the game if new players aren't sticking around. Every game goes through population ups and downs, the ability to bring in new players (and keep at least some of them) is what determines if a game survives.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Helbent
grammar

[Slamz]

On 8/11/2017 at 5:12 PM, vazco said:

In my opinion the main problem is not the ship cost - in Eve the cost is much bigger. The problem is that there is no real mechanism to support even battles in OW.

EVE has that same "problem" -- no mechanism supports even battles. Actually no good OW game has any sort of mechanic to make fights even. It's the nature of the beast. Mechanics that try to make fights even are always worse than the problem they were trying to solve. (I think the #1 thing that killed POTBS was their "6v6" mechanic. The end result was you felt like you couldn't play if you didn't have exactly 6 people.)

NA, especially since patch 10, does make fights a lot less lethal, though. 10v5 in EVE most likely all 5 will die. 10v5 in NA back in early 2016, same thing. Now? Usually 1-2 die and the rest can escape. Laser-accurate tailguns and multiple repairs mostly favors the guy trying to escape. Add on the new anti-re-tag mechanics (warp invis) and the odds of escaping for good are even better.

So no, I don't think that's the problem at all.

Mostly I think it's a list of abuses of game mechanics that ultimately makes people quit:

• Using battles to avoid screening fleets. Smart strategy but it's "gamey" and just made a lot of people waste a lot of time. It's not fun for the people using the exploit either.
• Using alt-spies. Every nation does it and the inability to green on green makes it into a problem that players can't solve.
• Hiding in port / hiding in battles. Timers were supposed to address this but have been allowed to get out of whack. You can totally hide in a battle, now. Again.

These all lead to frustrating experiences.

The old 5v1 "gank" is not, I think, nearly as much of a problem because unless they are using one of the above "gaming the game" features, it's generally something you can see coming and defend against.

Although I'll also add in:

• "Defensive tags". If I have actually run you down on the OW, I think I should get a crack at you. A defensive tag that puts you so far away that we have both just wasted a lot of time is a dumb mechanic.

[Slamz]

4 hours ago, Skully said:

so we are leaving to come back when the development team is done on a new rule set.

This is worth highlighting.

Devs should really take a step back and examine the current ruleset.

Some critical elements, like how tagging works and the timers around it, clearly make no sense right now.

Everything about port battles is basically broken -- how you create them, how you get to them, the various exploits that exist surrounding them... the entire system needs to be re-thought.

We've learned a lot over the last 2 years and I think a lot of this can be sorted out but we do need a rule set re-design. Like, I would prefer to just let port battles be an unavoidable element that has no screening fleets, which people simply join from their capital (or any friendly port) rather than let them revolve around a number of broken mechanics that nobody seems to enjoy.

[Helbent]

21 minutes ago, Slamz said:

This is worth highlighting.

Devs should really take a step back and examine the current ruleset.

Some critical elements, like how tagging works and the timers around it, clearly make no sense right now.

Everything about port battles is basically broken -- how you create them, how you get to them, the various exploits that exist surrounding them... the entire system needs to be re-thought.

We've learned a lot over the last 2 years and I think a lot of this can be sorted out but we do need a rule set re-design. Like, I would prefer to just let port battles be an unavoidable element that has no screening fleets, which people simply join from their capital (or any friendly port) rather than let them revolve around a number of broken mechanics that nobody seems to enjoy.

If I am honest with myself, I think port battles themselves are the root of a lot of the RvR issues right now. They are a flawed mechanic, and we keep introducing more and more complicated solutions to try and make them work. I would say it is time to just remove them from the RvR portion of the game, to return with some future TBD mechanic. Instead we do something like:

1. ports get flipped when they get to 100% hostility. no PB scheduled afterwards, the grind to get it to 100% is all you have to do.

2. Change the rules for generating hostility so there are only 2 ways to increase hostility: OW PVP (adds killed player to BR instantly just like current mechanics), and timer-based mechanic that will add say 25% ship BR to the hostility for every 15 minutes of being in the OW in a counties "zone". Entering port or leaving the zone reset your timer to zero, and entering a battle freezes the timer so it stops counting but as soon as you come out of battle and can be attacked, it picks up where it left off. No more PVE, and the PVP method should be significantly more efficient than sitting in the OW doing nothing.

3. The amount of BR required to reach 100% hostility scales based on nation size. So if your nation controls 1-5 regions, the needed amount to flip is the "base" value, 6-10  regions is 2x the base value, 11-15 regions is 5x the base, and 16+ is 10x. If you really want to zerg the map, you still can but the effort required is significantly increased as you grow which hopefully encourages people to focus efforts on what they actually need and have strategic value, and not just spread out for the sake of colored dots. This should also make it much easier for a small nation to take a region from a large nation than it is for the large nation to take it back, which will also hopefully encourage some more balance on the map.

 

The goal would be to more tightly couple the RVR game with the rest of the game, and remove the artificial "set-pieces" of PBs which cause more headache than they are worth. While it is a nice idea to have an "equal footing" battle to determine the owner of a port to give the small guy a chance, the reality is all those set-pieces do is force the creation of a fleet of PB-specific ships that still gives an advantage to the larger nations, and consolidates power in the large clans as they can afford to have this fleet of single purpose ships. 

Letting clans control individual ports within their nation and what that means and how it works is still something I would like to see more work on, but I don't think clan-based warfare applied to the existing RVR mechanics is really going to solve the issues.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Helbent

[Slamz]

Yeah, port battles are the root of lots of evil in this game.

Here's a common problem we have right now:

France wants a fight but can't really field 25 players (plus screeners!) for a 1st rate port battle. We can fight any nation on the open sea but we're short handed for the big 25v25 showdown. So we go grind a port in the hope it will cause PvP to happen but the defenders just ignore the grind, because they know perfectly well that they can show up to the port battle itself and win that. (I actually think a lot of them don't log in at all unless there's a port battle to attend.)

So it creates this situation where they won't fight us on the open sea and we can't fight them in the port battle. We stop grinding their ports up because they don't show up to stop the grind and they stop grinding our ports up because we don't show up to the port battle. (They "win" but they wasted 4+ hours of their lives killing NPCs and sitting in an empty fight to do it. Not much fun.)

Port battles are a concept taken from POTBS. It had problems there, too. I'm not sure we need them at all and they cause too many problems -- compounded as server pop drops.

Teams like the Dutch on our server have almost never been able to do a PB at all and teams like the Spanish and Swedes have never been able to do a a real port battle. Since the reset the Danes have only had off-hour port battles that only they can show up to.

Probably 1 out of 20 port battles is great fun and the other 19 just completely suck. It's not worth it.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Slamz

[Karpfanger]

12 minutes ago, Slamz said:

Yeah, port battles are the root of lots of evil in this game.

Here's a common problem we have right now:

France wants a fight but can't really field 25 players (plus screeners!) for a 1st rate port battle. We can fight any nation on the open sea but we're short handed for the big 25v25 showdown. So we go grind a port in the hope it will cause PvP to happen but the defenders just ignore the grind, because they know perfectly well that they can show up to the port battle itself and win that. (I actually think a lot of them don't log in at all unless there's a port battle to attend.)

So it creates this situation where they won't fight us on the open sea and we can't fight them in the port battle. We stop grinding their ports up because they don't show up to stop the grind and they stop grinding our ports up because we don't show up to the port battle. (They "win" but they wasted 4+ hours of their lives killing NPCs and sitting in an empty fight to do it. Not much fun.)

Port battles are a concept taken from POTBS. It had problems there, too. I'm not sure we need them at all and they cause too many problems -- compounded as server pop drops.

Teams like the Dutch on our server have almost never been able to do a PB at all and teams like the Spanish and Swedes have never been able to do a a real port battle. Since the reset the Danes have only had off-hour port battles that only they can show up to.

Probably 1 out of 20 port battles is great fun and the other 19 just completely suck. It's not worth it.

... so a simple solution would be to bring back a good (better and more dynamic) alliance system. So smaler Nations could participate on PBs with their allies.

[Helbent]

25 minutes ago, Karpfanger said:

... so a simple solution would be to bring back a good (better and more dynamic) alliance system. So smaler Nations could participate on PBs with their allies.

The alliance system is actually a perfect example of a complex system being added to attempt to fix the flawed PB mechanic. It wasn't a simple system with all the ROE changes, and because it was determined by the majority it increased the "meta-game" emphasis even more. 

[Fargo]

7 hours ago, admin said:

We are trying and trying hard to fix problems and experiment/experiment/experiment… 
yet when new people ask - should they get this game - they get this in response

Well, its the result that counts, and youre probably not doin a good job so far. Instead of analysing an issue, youre doin arbitrary changes. What i dont understand is why you dont revert back a change when it turned out to be nonesense. 

Capturable 5th rates e.g. are nonsense, cause we dont know if ship cost is too high at all, and reduced ship cost would be a better alternative not affecting economy. So whats your reasoning for that? And why dont you change it back when you cant justify it?

Or mulitple repairs. Absolutely unrealistic, and bad for gameplay. Why stick to it? There are also good suggestions how repairs could be made less powerful in general.

I can ask much more questions like this, and i tried. Why do you ignore this kind of productive criticism?

On the other hand people whining without any proof of their complains get listened to. Pure opinions are meaningless. Its not about who likes this or that, its about whats best for NA. This can be figured out by pure argumentation, when you defined a goal. But there is no clear concept for the game. Thats also why its so difficult to make progress in discussions, everyone argues in favour of a different type of game. This goes from people prefering real time OW, to people just waiting for NA legends. 

1 hour ago, Slamz said:

Devs should really take a step back and examine the current ruleset.

Some critical elements, like how tagging works and the timers around it, clearly make no sense right now.

100% agree.

[Guest]

Someone else said it. Its hard to gather 25 guys for a pb. If one side can gather 25 and the other can then the battle is over before it began. 

Most clans in the pirate nation for the eu server have less than 10 guys. We need smaller scale things to do with those kind of numbers. (raids?) 

[admin]

On 11.08.2017 at 11:21 PM, Tenet said:

Sandbox games like EVE (2003) have some of the best longevity in the industry - when developers follow a smart plan of growing the community. There are countless other examples of PvP focused games that stay popular, particularly when they can be played in 1 hour bursts and not 6 hour sessions (EVE manages to fit in both). 

They are Low Budget Independent - True, but why is there no clear Road Map and Game Design Priorities that everyone can see in advance?  (Not just the Road map threads - where is the statement of the end-goal design?)

This post may sound very harsh for Developers, I hope it's taken as tough love. You hold the game we all love in your hands, and we all want to see it all succeed. I no longer want to hear weak excuses, or blaming players. I want to hear optimism and confidence, and small steps in the right direction constantly. I want to see the grand plan to give Naval Action the same resurgence and growth as experienced by EVE. 

You don't mention (very interested in why) that EVE required you to pay 14 dollars per month for how many years? 

So lets talk about it

• Players who spend 3000 hours (we have a lot) would have paid us 350 dollars already 
  • (if you play 4 hours per day every day this means 750 days or additional 350 dollars)
• Average hours in game are 100. This means on average players (if we would be EVE) would have paid us additional 45 dollars (so 100 dollars on average from a player.

Now what this means is very exciting.

• If we launched with EvE payment terms today we would be making approximately 300k per month (10000 active weekly players or 20,000 active monthly players). IMPORTANT: THIS IS EVEN WITH CURRENT ONLINE NUMBERS.
• This means.
  • i would be able to afford 10-15 more 3d modelers which will allow 
    • 5-7 ships per month with
      • ship interiors
      • deck views
      • stern and bow customization
      • sailplans customizations
  • I would be able to hire 10 programmers and writers who can deliver one major update (with NEW content) every month instead of one tuning and improvement or remake every 3-4 months. 
    • shallows
    • new ai
    • better missions
    • quest lines
    • manning forts
    • on deck boarding
    • multiship boarding
    • more crew on deck
  • Dedicated support and trained paid mods.
    • currently support is done by a support designer, qa and sometimes devs, which is crap as customer service must be magical. 

But its impossible as there is no subs. When haters post on steam DON'T BUY THE GAME - NONE of you you come to post something opposite there. As a result. People stop buying. Which is fine for us. People vote with the wallet and this is just business. 

You wanted to see a Grand plan - it was here all the time. We never said anything different. Its a box product with fixed content promised.
The promised grand plan is simple 
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=259130636

which is

The game will be shipped in 3 stages. 
Episode 1: Multiplayer combat. 
Episode 2: Upgradeable ships, crews, ranks, boarding
Episode 3: Sandbox open world, crafting and conquest 

Early access content 
10 ships
3 maps (weather and night or day)
These will be available after we get greenilght and get our build approved by Valve. 
PC Only. DX11 supported video card required.
 

Remember that we said - we will develop it based on your support and encouragement.

We delivered what we promised and more (3 or more unique port harbors, huge historical world, dynamic weather, day and night cycle, 10+ ships or maybe more). And the roadmap is currently just localization (promised) and user interface. 

After that we will work on NA until the sales stop. Based on reviews and community reactions to haters who deliberately try to stop new players from buying it is going to happen very soon. It will have community support and only new ships from Legends will be added to NA OW edition because the code is shared. 

This post above may sound very harsh for you, I hope it's taken as tough love.  I no longer want to hear weak excuses, or blaming developers. We delivered what we promised.  I want to hear optimism and confidence, and small steps in the right direction constantly - which means stopping raising expectations and accepting the game as is - helping players understand whats good about it, as we know there are good things otherwise you would not be here.

Another things is to start thinking for the game as a whole and for other groups of players who play the game. As too often feedback is just targeting one side of the story and make it worse for the other.

 

[Jean Ribault]

13 minutes ago, admin said:

...After that we will work on NA until the sales stop. Based on reviews and community reactions to haters who deliberately try to stop new players from buying it is going to happen very soon...

 

This statement makes you sound discouraged for the project.  However, stay encouraged.  I believe there are more lovers of the game than haters, it's just that the haters are more vocal, something we are all guilty of.  Also, I have seen you quote your new sales numbers as pretty high, so I'm not sure the haters are having as much a negative effect as you think.  Plus I generally ignore those kinds of reviews since they are unbelievably 1-sided and transparent most of the time, and I'm sure there are plenty others like myself.

I disagree with almost all of the whining done in the OP.  The only thing that I believe is totally valid is that newbies should be protected more, at least in the current state of the game where starting out is difficult.  That will protect many of the valued sales as well and cause/keep populations rising.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Jean Ribault

[Corona Lisa]

4 minutes ago, admin said:

 I want to hear optimism and confidence, and small steps in the right direction constantly

Do you take small steps? I and many others constantly see drastical changes with very little balancing in major patches (ship knowledge, a lot are useless, some are must have to be competitive). Also you seem to test a lot of things which is nice but you dont seem to take very much from it (going back and forth with RoE and timers).

11 minutes ago, admin said:

Episode 1: Multiplayer combat. 

Cant find any in small groups and ganking traders and noobs is no multiplayer combat for me.

 

I want to support the game because it has an amazing core but if its no fun anymore due to latest patches why should I support it and defend it?

[Teutonic]

I think we all want to see this game succeed.

I don't mean to sound harsh either but I continue to see many of us (the vocal crowd here on the forums) suggest many things that we all seem to like or at least think of varying ways to improve it annnnd.....well it doesn't happen.

I think I am with @Slamz at this time honestly. The game is such a mess with old mechanics clashing with new iterations. Parts of the game that are still there, but not supposed to be "there."

3 hours ago, Slamz said:

Devs should really take a step back and examine the current ruleset.

Some critical elements, like how tagging works and the timers around it, clearly make no sense right now.

Right here is what I think would be the best thing to do. Lets take a step back ourselves and the Developers too.

come back with either a "new rule set" Or a "clear rule set." Then When you implement this clear rule set, take all the garbage out that hangs in the corners. We have too many things in the game that just clash against each other creating messes left and right.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Teutonic

[Slamz]

9 minutes ago, admin said:

But its impossible as there is no subs.

The moment you decided to do open world, this should have become a subscription game. Or at least a "cash store" model, which I think you could still try:

Doubloons: $1 for 25,000.
When buying NPC ships from the store, you can buy with doubloons instead of gold. (Maybe players can sell ships for doubloons too, if they want...)
Forged Papers: 250,000 doubloons.
Character rename: 250,000 doubloons.
Ship paint: 25,000 doubloons per paint (goes down with the ship)
Character respec: 50 combat marks or 100,000 doubloons.
Blueprints can be bought with doubloons instead of marks.

No "pay to win" so no mods or permits for doubloons but the stuff above could be charged for.

[Helbent]

@admin

I think everyone here wants the game to succeed, and the goal of coming to the forums is usually to help find ways to make that happen. I get that steam reviews can be very slanted and that is frustrating, but the fact is some of them have a kernel of truth. And the ones that don't are obvious trolls that most intelligent people considering the game can see for what they are. 

The hard part is what is the goal? Some new mechanics you put in get complaints, but they get left in for extended periods of time. Some new things get added and within 2 weeks of the patch rolling out, you announce you don't like and are working on a replacement. I get that you have to test things, but it can be hard to tell what the different is between those two cases and why one gets removed and the other left in. Was it because something clashed with the overall vision for the game? Because the "right" people complained? Or because you pulled data off the back end that we don't have access to that showed a deeper problem? You are the dev and don't have to spill all the info to us, but knowing what is causing these things can help us defend the game and explain what is happening the way you are hoping we will. 

[admin]

11 minutes ago, Jon Snow lets go said:

 

I want to support the game because it has an amazing core but if its no fun anymore due to latest patches why should I support it and defend it?

You can support Legends then Jon Snow.
It will have amazing core, no ganking, somewhat balanced battles, tournaments and NO time wasting whatsoever.
And it will be free to play on PC and will also launch on Xbox and PS4. Which means it will be full with life.

Legends will also let us remove those who want all that mentioned above from the hardcore sandbox. Making OW game better as a result. 

[Vernon Merrill]

Here's what "I" would like to see happen...

Admin picks one person that he trusts from each of the major "factions" of players:

-One RvR'er

-One PvP'er

-One Econ'er

Have them AS A GROUP hash out what they liked and didnt like about all the changes tried over the last 2+ years...

Close down or at least wipe clean these cess-pools of certain forums (looking at you National News)...  

Have a strong advertising campaign with a FIRM release date.   

Release the game.

 

*I nominate @Prater for the PvP'er contingent as he is one of the few that has consistently made suggestions since sea-trials and is one of the more "even-keeled" personalities on here...

[Helbent]

3 minutes ago, admin said:

You can support Legends then Jon Snow.
It will have amazing core, no ganking, somewhat balanced battles, tournaments and NO time wasting whatsoever.
And it will be free to play on PC and will also launch on Xbox and PS4. Which means it will be full with life.

But why does that need to be the answer? Why can't we try to make this game more fun? Honestly, Legends doesn't appeal to me. I have enough "arena" games to play. This game was unique, which is what brought me here and what keeps me here. I know it's not your intention, but comments like this really do make it sound like you have given up on this game. and just moved your efforts to Legends. 

[Christoph]

I love this game but I've stopped playing this game.

The biggest problem is the time.

It takes too much time to do something in this game.

[Anolytic]

30 minutes ago, admin said:

You can support Legends then Jon Snow.
It will have amazing core, no ganking, somewhat balanced battles, tournaments and NO time wasting whatsoever.
And it will be free to play on PC and will also launch on Xbox and PS4. Which means it will be full with life.

Legends will also let us remove those who want all that mentioned above from the hardcore sandbox. Making OW game better as a result. 

Legends sounds great, but it is the OW game that I absolutely love, and always will be. It is the OW game where I find something new to explore, discover and admire every day I play, and which allows me to roleplay and immerse myself in the game and the community with such time-wasting activities as making videos, newspapers, declarations and art.

Some examples (I would put them in spoiler tags, but hello kitty IP Boards):

http://www.danmarknorge.org 

The "hardcore sandbox" game works well for me because I enjoy all these things that accompany it, and I endure grinding and the preparations necessary between opportunities to really fight. However, I do need someone to play with - other than my alts. Please do not put too much emphasis on the "hardcore" part. I will be the last one to leave this game, but if all my friends are gone, I will have nothing left to stay for except PvE. I really loved your new conquest ideas, and I think they have great potential to make the RvR-game more spontaneous and fun, like it used to be a year ago when, barring griefing and flag exploits, there was something happening every night and win or loose you could come back the next day and try again, not having to wait a week to get a ship and all your upgrades back. I think that you abandoned too soon some of the absolutely best parts of your ideas in your clan wars concept and I hope you revive them. The ideas gave me great hopes and great optimism for the OW game.

I want to support this game every way I can. Unfortunately, visiting, reading or commenting Steam forums is simply not part of my habit, whereas I check this forum here every five minutes all the time I am awake.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Anolytic

[Helbent]

4 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Whatever happened to the in-game purchases like paints, and add-on ship packs that were discussed pre-wipe? If, as you allude to, it's funding keeping you from actually doing the things that the game needs (bathymmetry, ships, hiring an economist and an MMO design team instead of just winging it, etc.) then give us the ability to provide that for you!

This! If funding is what is holding you back, let the players who are active and want the game to succeed give you money through something other than buying alts...

[Christendom]

This whole conversation today strikes me as odd.

@admin says it's fault of the community for not recommending the game and no new purchases = fewer players on the servers, but there is no mention of why this game has sold over 100k copies and 18months later it's down to roughly 2000 active players daily (that's being generous).  That's lower than a 5% retention rate.  Can we perhaps address why this game has such a poor retention rate instead of blaming the community for not recommending this game enough?  Why did those players leave?  Why is the new player grind so difficult?

Blaming your community is a pretty good way of making sure your loyal fans don't continue to purchase your titles.  Just a thought.  This game has some of the most fanatical and loyal fans that I've ever encountered, despite almost every one knowing and understanding that NA has issues and we're nowhere close to the final form of the game.  A lot of these people have purchased multiple copies of this game from you and participate in the forums that is far more active than the actual game.  Dismissing them and saying NA is basically at the end of it's life because we don't "recommend" it enough is bullshit and a cop out.  

Solve these questions and perhaps the game will become one that we CAN recommend.  

PS - it's obvious from your posts that the root of everything here is money.  You've been presented with numerous plans over the years as to how to increase the monetization of the game.   Sell Forged Paper transfers for RL money, sell server transfers for money, sell paints, pennants, ship name changes.....shit even sell certain ships or packs.  None of this has been done.  Half of global right now would probably purchase another set of forged papers off you tomorrow if it you made it happen.  I'm sure EU would do the same.  

 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Christendom

[Anne Wildcat]

My suggestion to keep the RvR guys active on the ow, and this may be a bad idea since I'm not into the RVR, a map wipe (not asset wipe) every 6 months. There always seem to be more excitement when the map is new.