PvE player thoughts on what's wrong in PvP

[Genma Saotome]

No... not the usual poke in the eye rant about ganking and baby seal clubbing... some serious thoughts here.

Core Assumptions:

• Dev's want a viable game that will attract and keep customers.
• They don't seem to have obtained that in spite of a quality visual product.

Having read many, many complaints from the PvP world it occurs to me the core complaints are

• Players really don't like losing the ship that took so long to acquire.
• Players don't like being put behind the 8 ball by extensive loss of territory.

Am I right on that?

If so, might the solution be something along these lines: Each player has his own inventory of assets that are, essentially permanent. Changes, either by buying, selling, or accepting a sinking, are made only by each player.  Player can take his acquired inventory from server to server but can only be active on one server per day (or week, subject to observation by DEV's to determine best answer).  Servers come and go frequently with several available at any one time. This means a server is no longer one machine but is one world, many of which could be on one machine.  Maps come and go with each new server instance.

IMO the net effect of something like this would be players no longer face the long term consequences of loss... either ship or territory.  Players move from one server to another with their inventory, changing maps as they go.  NO LOSSES other than what they accept. Maps are refreshed with each server rollout. The effect would be much less reason for anyone to say "Oh Screw this!" and leave. More players are happy enough to stick around; Better reviews get posted; Dev's sell more licenses; More players should mean more big fights; Noobs still get kicked around but never lose their assets, instead they get more skilled, opening the door to getting better ships. 

The alternative is to continue down the same path people know: Catastrophic loss drives away players; Reviews are not good; Dev's do not sell many more license; Like a doomed aircraft, game augers in after a long stall, wreckage burns and nothing is salvaged.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Genma Saotome

[Genma Saotome]

Obviously people don't like this idea.  All I can say is think about it more.

 

Extending it one step further: When somebody wins a port battle they take over.  That usually isn't the way it worked in the old days -- you needed Army troops to do that and they were often very busy back in Europe.  As an alternative to simply reclassifying most ports as non-national, consider this: Let the winner of any port battle pillage the city, taking however much goods as their ships holds will carry (and the players want to take).  Then they leave.  MAYBE allow a certain (low) percentage of player buildings and warehouses (randomly selected) to be pillaged or burned.

That's a setback, not a fatal loss.  Avoiding fatal loss is what the dev's seem to have as an objective: a game that swings back and forth between competing players -- but they'll never be able to accomplish that because player skill, numbers of players per side, and pure chance always weigh in and absent eliminating permanent loss those factors will always lead to one side or the other dominating, exactly what the DEV;s are always trying to eliminate.

That is to say that IMO the goal the DEV's have is un-achievable; their constant search produces constant major revisions that look like they've got no idea which way to turn, most of which piss off large numbers of players and basically upsets the apple cart as far as playability goes.  They need to think about creating that balance by eliminating permanent loss of assets, whether that's country ports or some-to-all of each players ships*.

*Rather than give back sunk ships two minutes after they go down put in a cool down period in... 24 hours? 7 days?  Maybe longer with more and better ships so noobs can get back into the action sooner. I don't know the right number but it can be figured out by trial and error.  The game becomes more like football: One side wins today but they keep their gear and can play again next week.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Genma Saotome

[monk33y]

We had 5 dura ships and even then people complained about loosing them.

 

[Demsity]

With the amount of gold and combat marks that you make doing missions now, replacing ships that sink is not a game problem any more, it is a player mentality problem.

Replacing ships is really easy and fast (except big ships but they should be harder to obtain), but if you want a good ship with good refits, it will cost you more, as it should be.

Players are still afraid to loose ships, but the devs have made it really easy to replace them.

[Bubba Smith]

I think there might be away to play both PvE and PvP at the same time. Enable the PvP/PvE flag if you want/don't PvP play. Similar to that of the Smuggler Flag now, there could be an additional flag for allowing PvP attacks and of course NO PvP attacks for those whom prefer the PvE style play. I think it could be a good marriage of both styles. Of course port battles, shops, trading economies could be unified as well. Giving PvP access to experienced PvE crafters and sales. If PvE players don't want in on battles they can stay in their game too. 

Just an idea; although simple in its concept I see there could be complications with PvP port battles. 

 

[Batman]

2 hours ago, Buba Smith said:

I think there might be away to play both PvE and PvP at the same time. Enable the PvP/PvE flag if you want/don't PvP play. Similar to that of the Smuggler Flag now, there could be an additional flag for allowing PvP attacks and of course NO PvP attacks for those whom prefer the PvE style play.

 

Then traders will sail with PvE flag across OW. Port Battle fleets will sail with PvE Flags to enemy port to avoid screening and only disable it right infront of port.