HELP: PVPrs need more ways to find PVP

[Rebel Witch]

The devs are starting to create a true sandbox where both PVP and carebear pve is welcome on one map. That will help longterm to bring more people. However, i will agree that PVPrs need more help in finding other PVPrs to fight with.

One of the biggest hindrances to PVP in this game is the RIDICULOUS amount of time it takes to sail around just to find action. People are starting to call this NAVAL TIMESINK not NAVAL ACTION.

Here are my proposals to help players who want to PVP find each other, bring them together and spur more pvp on the server without impacting the carebear safe areas.

Combat news was a great first step in encouraging and rewarding PVPrs. Lets take it a step further with a server leader board for top killers, top damage dealers etc. PVPrs often love recognition for their efforts, so leader boards for the winners is great. Thats just cosmetic though, here are ideas to bring them together.

The devs need to realize that the time it takes to sail to find PVP is hurting the game. this is not real life sailing, its people on a computer trying to find fun, sailing for hours finding nothing gets old FAST.

Create a pvp challenge option in the UI screen, lets say a player is bored he wants to pvp and doesnt have time to sail around. He clicks on a tab, pushes a button to add themselves to a challenge list and another player looking for pvp notices the challenge waiting and joins it. They could tier them by BR to help make the pvp more balanced i recommend just using BR for your ship and fleet. That way pvp battles can be much more varied. So a 1st rate can face off against a combined fleet of 3 frigates (1 player 2 in his fleet) for example. That way its not just 4th rate vs 4th rate or 1st rate vs 1st rate. it gives players options to do an assortment of pvp battles at small scale. player vs player.

Next idea..multi idea read carefully. King of the Hill zones, circles and clan ownership of areas of ocean territory.

Create King of the Hill (KOTH) zones around the map. PVPrs go to a KOTH circle on the map, a central circle where players meet to fight each other with their ships. These KOTH circles serve as a gathering place for Pvp but also for control of the map as well.

KOTH circles are surrounded by a KOTH zone which is a large area of open ocean that the winning side literally controls. Control over an open ocean area would matter if the Devs could make the zones taxable or tolls. So if your clan takes over a KOTH zone and controls it, any ships passing through that KOTH zone must pay a toll to pass through it. If they dont pay the toll maybe npc ships of your nation attack or something. The idea is to make KOTH zones not just magnets for PVP but also matter in the open world as ways to now control large areas of ocean with your clan.

Lets say the ocean territory idea doesnt work for the devs? Fine, but at least the KOTH circles should not be too hard t implement to be magnets for pvp and challenge areas for pvprs to control.

I hope naval action legends is incorporated into naval action and not a stand alone game because NAL will spur on more pvp in NA and also be a huge boost for crafting and trade.

 

 

[Liq]

2 minutes ago, Rebel Witch said:

Create a pvp challenge option in the UI screen, lets say a player is bored he wants to pvp and doesnt have time to sail around. He clicks on a tab, pushes a button to add themselves to a challenge list and another player looking for pvp notices the challenge waiting and joins it.

But I think they're developping Legends for that reason. Would have liked to see the both aspects combined in one game, never saw the small battles hurting anyone

 

6 minutes ago, Rebel Witch said:

Create King of the Hill (KOTH) zones around the map. PVPrs go to a KOTH circle on the map, a central circle where players meet to fight each other with their ships. These KOTH circles serve as a gathering place for Pvp but also for control of the map as well.

basically the old pvp event zones around la navasse to la tortue - could work out well, why not .)

[Hawkwood]

1 hour ago, Rebel Witch said:

The devs are starting to create a true sandbox where both PVP and carebear pve is welcome on one map. That will help longterm to bring more people. However, i will agree that PVPrs need more help in finding other PVPrs to fight with.

One of the biggest hindrances to PVP in this game is the RIDICULOUS amount of time it takes to sail around just to find action. People are starting to call this NAVAL TIMESINK not NAVAL ACTION.

Here are my proposals to help players who want to PVP find each other, bring them together and spur more pvp on the server without impacting the carebear safe areas.

Combat news was a great first step in encouraging and rewarding PVPrs. Lets take it a step further with a server leader board for top killers, top damage dealers etc. PVPrs often love recognition for their efforts, so leader boards for the winners is great. Thats just cosmetic though, here are ideas to bring them together.

The devs need to realize that the time it takes to sail to find PVP is hurting the game. this is not real life sailing, its people on a computer trying to find fun, sailing for hours finding nothing gets old FAST.

Create a pvp challenge option in the UI screen, lets say a player is bored he wants to pvp and doesnt have time to sail around. He clicks on a tab, pushes a button to add themselves to a challenge list and another player looking for pvp notices the challenge waiting and joins it. They could tier them by BR to help make the pvp more balanced i recommend just using BR for your ship and fleet. That way pvp battles can be much more varied. So a 1st rate can face off against a combined fleet of 3 frigates (1 player 2 in his fleet) for example. That way its not just 4th rate vs 4th rate or 1st rate vs 1st rate. it gives players options to do an assortment of pvp battles at small scale. player vs player.

Next idea..multi idea read carefully. King of the Hill zones, circles and clan ownership of areas of ocean territory.

Create King of the Hill (KOTH) zones around the map. PVPrs go to a KOTH circle on the map, a central circle where players meet to fight each other with their ships. These KOTH circles serve as a gathering place for Pvp but also for control of the map as well.

KOTH circles are surrounded by a KOTH zone which is a large area of open ocean that the winning side literally controls. Control over an open ocean area would matter if the Devs could make the zones taxable or tolls. So if your clan takes over a KOTH zone and controls it, any ships passing through that KOTH zone must pay a toll to pass through it. If they dont pay the toll maybe npc ships of your nation attack or something. The idea is to make KOTH zones not just magnets for PVP but also matter in the open world as ways to now control large areas of ocean with your clan.

Lets say the ocean territory idea doesnt work for the devs? Fine, but at least the KOTH circles should not be too hard t implement to be magnets for pvp and challenge areas for pvprs to control.

I hope naval action legends is incorporated into naval action and not a stand alone game because NAL will spur on more pvp in NA and also be a huge boost for crafting and trade.

 

 

Go to any free port, open outpost and sail around.

You are maybe to lazy to do so

 

[Slim McSauce]

4 minutes ago, Cortez said:

Go to any free port, open outpost and sail around.

You are maybe to lazy to do so

 

You must be new here

[pompeyck]

read combat news see where other pvp'ers are hunting and go there fight them , or do you mean easy pickings like traders.

[victor]

1 hour ago, Cortez said:

Go to any free port, open outpost and sail around.

You are maybe to lazy to do so

 

I suggest tumbado (for PVP EU) from mid afternoon till night: you will find a lot of raging pirates, several dwelling spaniards, countless lurking brits, and some erratic swede. And I saw also one french and one yankee. Only danes and dutch are missing!

Edited October 4, 2017 by victor

[Jean Ribault]

Age of sail game will require sailing, I don't have any issue with that.  But if you truly do want to fight another player, and allegedly another player is on the server too that wants pvp action, then there's a chat window: "hey I want to pvp in [pick a location]", and there you head.  If this problem is as big as claimed, then there will be players all over the map looking for that fight.  If not, then this really isn't a problem at all.

[Vizzini]

Try having a base within 30 mins sailing of an enemy. It's as hard as people want it to be right now. Be more mobile, don't have a safe base 2 hours away from the hotspots

[Strake]

I appreciate Rebel Witch's suggestions and think they are good, but to me, the root cause of the difficulty in finding PVP is the low player population, and until there is more compelling OW content to attract and keep new players sailing around the OW and exploring, this game will never live up to its immense potential. There have been dozens of threads over the past year full of great ideas about how to make the OW more fun and interesting. I'm frustrated that these ideas seem to never make onto the priority list for development.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Strake

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Strake said:

I appreciate Rebel Witch's suggestions and think they are good, but to me, the root cause of the difficulty in finding PVP is the low player population, and until there is more compelling OW content to attract and keep new players sailing around the OW and exploring, this game will never live up to its immense potential. There have been dozens of threads over the past year full of great ideas about how to make the OW more fun and interesting. I'm frustrated that these ideas seem to never make onto the priority list for development.

In the previous 90% of the game's development, I'd agree with you.

But at the moment, I don't see how having a higher population even helps, when 90% of the players stick top 10% of the protected areas of the map, and mostly do trading, crafting and mission-running on their own anyways. There's so few reasons to venture outside of it, and you'd need 1000+ players to reach the point where the few that do are enough to provide reliable PvP encounters for others to do the same instead of wasting yet another evening finding no-one.

[Slim McSauce]

2 hours ago, Jean Ribault said:

 But if you truly do want to fight another player, and allegedly another player is on the server too that wants pvp action, then there's a chat window: "hey I want to pvp in [pick a location]", and there you head.  If this problem is as big as claimed, then there will be players all over the map looking for that fight.  If not, then this really isn't a problem at all.

freaking ew dude. No one wants to set up a battle like that. 

[Hawkwood]

5 hours ago, Slim Jimmerson said:

You must be new here

You must be playing on PvE server

 

[Hawkwood]

3 hours ago, victor said:

I suggest tumbado (for PVP EU) from mid afternoon till night: you will find a lot of raging pirates, several dwelling spaniards, countless lurking brits, and some erratic swede. And I saw also one french and one yankee. Only danes and dutch are missing!

Yep. Great Corn dangerous too

 

[Barbancourt]

1 hour ago, Aegir said:

In the previous 90% of the game's development, I'd agree with you.

But at the moment, I don't see how having a higher population even helps, when 90% of the players stick top 10% of the protected areas of the map, and mostly do trading, crafting and mission-running on their own anyways. There's so few reasons to venture outside of it, and you'd need 1000+ players to reach the point where the few that do are enough to provide reliable PvP encounters for others to do the same instead of wasting yet another evening finding no-one.

But bringing the population back at their own pace is the first step.  As has been said, there is no clear general incentive for PvP beyond just "PvP", which for most players usually means losing badly.  People want a clear reason to sacrifice their time and ships, not just because it's called "PvP server" and the wolf is waiting for his dinner.  There's gotta be a carrot to risk the stick for.  Building the population base, with more players getting either confident or cocky or maybe bored, means more will venture out.  More population also means more people to venture out with. 

 

Edited October 4, 2017 by Barbancourt (rownd)

[Macjimm]

 I think Legends will solve most of the "lack of PvP" problems.  NAL will be focused entirely on PvP.

NA is an MMO and open world.  If I understand correctly the players can create a lot of the content.  I wondered for a long time why all the PvPer have so much difficulty finding each other.  I've suggested before that one of the enthusiastic PvPers should post an ad in the forums (and periodically post it in global chat) of a scheduled date and time for a PvP area calling for all willing combatants to rally up and fight.    If there are truly lots of bored PvPers waiting,  one would expect that some of them just might show up.

Please don't remove the OW long distance sails.  NA is not NAL.

 

[Slim McSauce]

Just now, Macjimm said:

 I think Legends will solve most of the "lack of PvP" problems.  NAL will be focused entirely on PvP.

NA is an MMO and open world.  If I understand correctly the players can create a lot of the content.  I wondered for a long time why all the PvPer have so much difficulty finding each other.  I've suggested before that one of the enthusiastic PvPers should post an ad in the forums (and periodically post it in global chat) of a scheduled date and time for a PvP area calling for all willing combatants to rally up and fight.    If there are truly lots of bored PvPers waiting,  one would expect that some of them just might show up.

Please don't remove the OW long distance sails.  NA is not NAL.

 

You have to be a PVPer to truly understand. But believe me, a vast majority agree PVP is extremely rare nowadays compared to a few months ago when we had things like the siege of mort, or the scurge of cton

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Barbancourt (rownd) said:

But bringing the population back at their own pace is the first step.  As has been said, there is no clear general incentive for PvP beyond just "PvP", which for most players usually means losing badly.  People want a clear reason to sacrifice their time and ships, not just because it's called "PvP server" and the wolf is waiting for his dinner.  There's gotta be a carrot to risk the stick for.  Building the population base, with more players getting either confident or cocky or maybe bored, means more will venture out.  More population also means more people to venture out with.

Well, of course there's no reason to PvP anymore, since most reasons to do so are seen as obstacles to PvP or replaced with idiot-proof mechanics.

Capturing an enemy ship was a nice objective to have, but since ship cost was seen as an obstacle to PvP instead we now have a case where capturing anything other than a 1st rate is just "meh". Before that, capturing a 4th rate would be pretty neat, and a 1st rate amazing.

Patrolling homewaters and escorting traders was a nice objective to have, but when ROE and combat mechanics made it a hopeless rabbit chase it made ganking non-PvP ships the only remaining option, and now that's gone too, replaced by the almighty AI, while the underlying issue continues to plague encounters between PvP-fitted players.

The only remaining objective, and thus the only significant source of OW PvP, is now RvR. Let's see how long that one lasts.

If you think that people need a clear incentive to venture out, why do you then say that it will happen even when there is still none provided just as long as there's just more people playing?

[Barbancourt]

51 minutes ago, Aegir said:

The only remaining objective, and thus the only significant source of OW PvP, is now RvR. Let's see how long that one lasts.

If you think that people need a clear incentive to venture out, why do you then say that it will happen even when there is still none provided just as long as there's just more people playing?

What's going on now doesn't seem like RvR - some groups are just taking ports to have something to do, but possessing the ports doesn't really matter in itself except perhaps to cut travel times across the map. 

More players in the game means you have a much greater chance of getting people together to go out as a group and possibly survive PvP. which is where the enjoyment is.  If only say 5 people in your clan/friends list are online it its unlikely you can get even 3 of them together to do the same thing for the same period of time.  If 15 are online the chances of getting a group together for an hour or two are far higher, and people will be able to venture out of their home bubbles.  A game reason/motivation to go somewhere to battle would still help keep people interested, but you have to have the numbers to even consider it. 

The RoE is a bit of a problem.  I really don't understand the RoE, based on my past experiences.  I can't predict what I can tag and who can tag me. 

 

 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Barbancourt (rownd) said:

 

Sad thing is that the last 2 times I ventured out as part of a group of ~15 is that absolutely *nothing* happened - if anything it was even worse than doing it solo/small group.

Partially because responding to such a spontaneous threat takes considerable time for you to organize from scratch (despite that we went there knowing that there were enough folks around to do it). Partially due to people being so risk-averse they wont do anything until they know just how strong the enemy is and that your guys outmatch them (at that point you're waiting for 20 guys to organize). And then most importantly because there's absolutely no reason left to prompt people into wanting to remove the threat - not even 100+ players can threaten the almighty safe zone, so why bother with them?

So you have to rely on there being 20 disorganized risk-averse and very bored players around to form a defense fleet within the 40-50 minutes it takes before you yourself get bored and log off wondering why you've wasted away yet another evening doing nothing. That simply doesn't happen.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Guest

[jodgi]

Part of me wants to poke at this... "Oh, so you love the economy and the fact that loss matters but it's hard to get players to provide PvP content?"

_____________________________

I understand the frustration because I used to share it, deeply. I've just come to terms with OW being mainly an eco thing where players only pvp if extremely motivated or forced.

Who are these sandbox AND PvP lovers who expect to have a cake and eat it too?

How can OW have a higher pvp/pve ratio than the pitiful small ratio they have in EVE? I presume every eco lover at least knows about EVE and how things are there. Admin quoted some numbers a long time ago and I don't remember exactly; But think along the lines of pvp/pve ratio of 1/100 - 1/500.

Aren't you asking the impossible? How can we get more PvP players when everything is under the heel of eco? Isn't that what you wanted, an eco game where "stuff matters"?

 

[victor]

1 hour ago, jodgi said:

Part of me wants to poke at this... "Oh, so you love the economy and the fact that loss matters but it's hard to get players to provide PvP content?"

_____________________________

I understand the frustration because I used to share it, deeply. I've just come to terms with OW being mainly an eco thing where players only pvp if extremely motivated or forced.

Who are these sandbox AND PvP lovers who expect to have a cake and eat it too?

How can OW have a higher pvp/pve ratio than the pitiful small ratio they have in EVE? I presume every eco lover at least knows about EVE and how things are there. Admin quoted some numbers a long time ago and I don't remember exactly; But think along the lines of pvp/pve ratio of 1/100 - 1/500.

Aren't you asking the impossible? How can we get more PvP players when everything is under the heel of eco? Isn't that what you wanted, an eco game where "stuff matters"?

 

Or just give a (lower) reward also to the part that looses the fight in PVP

Let' suppose - in example - that

1) sinking a 5th rate ship in PVE grants you - let's say - 10 combat marks, 100 xp and 50.000 gold,

2) sinking a 5th rate in PVP grants you - let's say - 20 combat marks, 200 xp and 100.000 gold,

and add this feature:

3) being sunk in a 5th rate in PVP (but with a certain treshold of damage dealt to the winner) grants you 15 combat marks, 150 xp and 75.000 gold .

I guess that you'll see some more player trying the path of OS PVP in their cheap frigates or surprises.

Edited October 5, 2017 by victor

[Jean Ribault]

22 hours ago, Slim Jimmerson said:

freaking ew dude. No one wants to set up a battle like that. 

No one?  Then why do I see it done?  Also then you probably don't want pvp anyway, you prefer to gank I'm guessing?  Then you'd have no need to talk to someone about it.  pvp2 last year, there were large groups and many nights arranged as such.  Many had fun, don't I don't recall anyone saying ew.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Jean Ribault

[Slim McSauce]

20 minutes ago, Jean Ribault said:

No one?  Then why do I see it done?  Also then you probably don't want pvp anyway, you prefer to gank I'm guessing?  Then you'd have no need to talk to someone about it.  pvp2 last year, there were large groups and many nights arranged as such.  Many had fun, don't I don't recall anyone saying ew.

Because we're desperate people in dire circumstance. New players can smell that desperation and they get immediately turned off. They want strong, confident, spontaneous PVP, not pity paty cucked arranged battles.

[Jean Ribault]

2 minutes ago, Slim Jimmerson said:

Because we're desperate people in dire circumstance. New players can smell that desperation and they get immediately turned off. They want strong, confident, spontaneous PVP, not pity paty cucked arranged battles.

I agree perhaps in the long run a permanent solution should be had.  However, the premise is that the battle cannot be found.  I disagree with that premise, it's just laziness or a paraphrase of I can't find someone to gank.

[Rigs]

On 10/4/2017 at 4:49 PM, Aegir said:

Well, of course there's no reason to PvP anymore, since most reasons to do so are seen as obstacles to PvP or replaced with idiot-proof mechanics.

Capturing an enemy ship was a nice objective to have, but since ship cost was seen as an obstacle to PvP instead we now have a case where capturing anything other than a 1st rate is just "meh". Before that, capturing a 4th rate would be pretty neat, and a 1st rate amazing.

Patrolling homewaters and escorting traders was a nice objective to have, but when ROE and combat mechanics made it a hopeless rabbit chase it made ganking non-PvP ships the only remaining option, and now that's gone too, replaced by the almighty AI, while the underlying issue continues to plague encounters between PvP-fitted players.

The only remaining objective, and thus the only significant source of OW PvP, is now RvR. Let's see how long that one lasts.

If you think that people need a clear incentive to venture out, why do you then say that it will happen even when there is still none provided just as long as there's just more people playing?

I'm only playing for couple weeks but I got to say that's funny, new name for the reinforcement zones, keep them out. 

Edited October 6, 2017 by Rigs