Require pvp to play on pvp server

[Malachy]

7 hours ago, Grundgemunkey said:

so you dont like fighting the numerous  pve players ,, but when you go to nations that were designed for the hardcore pvp players there isnt any around ... do you see the flaw in your plan ???

The numerous pve players don't fight. They have a yellow streak half a mile wide down their backs. The people that went Russian etc aren't the hardcore folks they proclaimed themselves to be. Most of them spend more time hiding than the carebears do.

[Hethwill]

Maybe they don't want to fight  you specifically ? After all, pvp is a social thing

Out of jokes, majority didn't read the new nations decriptions and immediately selected it due to RL reasons or because their communities changed. And the subject is diverting from a suggestion to player issues, both are incompatible as code mechanics are blind to human concerns.

What you suggest could have been done with career system, but we have sandbox, we make our choices without any entity to answer to in case of failure or success.

Environment activities are integral part of the sandbox.

[Farrago]

1 hour ago, Rickard said:

haha, this is the stupidest post I have seen in a while...

 

I’m not sure if it’s the stupidest — that would be a tough competition — but it does reveal an incredible lack of understanding of game design, player population, and of people in general.

Naval Action is not a first person shooter. It is a niche, historical game. You’re never going to have a sufficient population interested in just sailing ship PVP battles to satisfy the simple shooter crowd. The game has to get richer in content due to diverse population goals. Preferably these goals will take more and more players outside the safe zones. Then we will have more PVP, but not only the PVP the poster seems to prefer. It will be players influencing their nation’s success by competing against other players not just on the battlefield, but in the economic markets, in technology, and in competition for resources.

[TheHaney]

18 hours ago, Malachy said:

My suggestion is that to remain on the pvp server, you must participate in a minimum of ten pvp battles per month

I'm super late to the "are you crazy" party, but hey! This is a terrible idea.

Like, it's terrible for so many reasons from mechanical, logistical, to customer satisfaction level. It's genuinely the silliest suggestion I've seen for a game, ever.

I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Edited November 26, 2017 by TheHaney

[Quineloe]

19 hours ago, Malachy said:

Incentives haven't worked. I believe in the carrot and stick approach. We've tried the carrot, now it's time for the stick and I'm a huge proponent of breaking  it over their heads. 

 

The other option is to completely remove all safe zones. Which I'm also big time in favor of. You want to be safe, play on pve

What was that carrot you're talking about? I don't see any PVP carrots.  Unless you go out solo (which is why we play online multiplayer games, AMIRITE OR WHAT?), it's very hard to find PVP fights that aren't lopsided ganks. There is absolutely no curated PVP outside of the RVR system. Either the PBs itself, or hostility interception - which is a pretty shite system right now anyways due to various issues we all know about. Everything else is either arranged (such as the tournament) or just sail around for a few hours and you may/may not find someone to fight.

There is no incentive for anyone but the top end of the player base to do exactly that right now.  Any inexperienced player trying that will run into one of these top players right away, lose their ship and get no reward at all for that. Because our time is worthless. Unless we play Naval Action Legends, where you get rewarded for losing, even though you're not losing your ship there when it sinks =)

Your suggestion is one thing for certain: Toxic.

Edited November 26, 2017 by Quineloe

[jodgi]

48 minutes ago, Farrago said:

You’re never going to have a sufficient population interested in just sailing ship PVP battles to satisfy the simple shooter crowd.

<stifled giggle>

We'll talk later about NA:L, "simple shooter crowd" and sufficient population.

[Quineloe]

1 hour ago, jodgi said:

<stifled giggle>

We'll talk later about NA:L, "simple shooter crowd" and sufficient population.

Is that the game that has to fill up the battles with 50% AI bots to reduce queue times?

[Liq]

10 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

Is that the game that has to fill up the battles with 50% AI bots to reduce queue times?

Nah we had some awesome battles this weekend.. 40 players in a battle is max I have seen. Player peak was at about 150 online.

That game could be huge. Needs some more polishing, more battle variety but overall it's amazing

Who knows, if the steam f2p audience likes it, it might become a huge supporter for NA Vanilla in terms of new ships or content added

Even though I for myself dont see much of a reason to play that instead of legends anymore

[Rhodry Heidenrich]

6 hours ago, Christendom said:

The problem is that unfortunately we have a map size meant for a game with a couple thousand players and it's only being filled by a couple hundred.  Every aspect of the game is going to be hurt by a lack of players, PVP the hardest.  To top everything off with a cherry, we now have another game by the same developer that is directly competing with a game that already has a very small population.  I understand your frustration at not finding PVP, but if you think kicking PVE players off the server is a good idea.....you're an idiot.  

the simply fact remains that NA needs more players.

This, this right here. 

Population would solve a lot of the problems NA OW has, but the problem is the game just doesn't have what it takes to entice the number of players needed for it to flesh itself out. Plain and simple, if we had the population the OP wouldn't have thought to post such a ludicrous suggestion. Why? Because he'd be up to his eyeballs in all of the PvP he could want, and he wouldn't be bored enough to get slapped by the "Good Idea Fairy".  (Always beware the Good Idea Fairy, as the suggestions this little sprite often plants in people's minds are anything but good). 

 

 

[Malachy]

3 hours ago, Quineloe said:

 

Your suggestion is one thing for certain: Toxic.

Like I said before, I'm not here to be anyone's friend, quite the opposite actually. I play all games for pvp. Nothing else matters to me and if you don't pvp, I could care less if you exist. I have made Friends and aquaintances in game, based upon pvp. I left Britain because I was tired of being in an entire nation of cowards too afraid to leave the safe zone. 

Edited November 27, 2017 by Malachy

[Farrago]

2 hours ago, jodgi said:

<stifled giggle>

We'll talk later about NA:L, "simple shooter crowd" and sufficient population.

I think you misunderstood my point. This discussion is about the game Naval Action, not Naval Action Legends. Legends will hopefully appeal to a huge number of shooter oriented players: the kind that want to click one button and get the immediate adrenaline rush. There is nothing wrong with such a game. But the game Naval Action can be so much more complex. Much of the structure is there already but it would be a huge step backwards to waste all the money and time invested by both players and the Devs to give up and say all this game is going to be is a really pretty version of a FPS.

[Hawkwood]

23 hours ago, Malachy said:

A chronic problem in this game is the amount of carebears on the pvp server. I think that pvp servers aren't for the faint hearted. My suggestion is that to remain on the pvp server, you must participate in a minimum of ten pvp battles per month where at least one ship is sunk. Otherwise you are moved to the pvp server. You can return to the pvp server once per thirty days but to remain there you have to pvp.

What is your issue exactly? Nobody wants to play against you?

[Hawkwood]

22 hours ago, Malachy said:

I have zero use for them

Wooooo

Dude, you lost it. How about you quit playing or play something else?

[DrZoidberg]

This game mechanics supress PVP, and it wont change. Understand it, and leave. I did the same.

[Slim McSauce]

the #1 problem for PVP is finding it. We relied so heavily on capitals for drawing out PVP, now its almost impossible to get the same numbers/consistency. Devs have taken away the natural area of focus, and now need to give us a hand crafted one before we global PVPers keel over and die of starvation. 

[Simon Cadete]

I might be the only one who agrees with Malachy. Sure with 2000 people online, everything gets solved but we’ll never have that again. If all the care bears got kicked from the pvp server, pve server would have nice numbers and if you cut the map size by 10 in the pvp servers you would have an easier time to find players. I’ve been on the same boat as Malachy, spending 3 or 4 hours sailing with nobody to fight with. I play or played in the global server where this problem is a lot worse.

[Malachy]

9 minutes ago, rediii said:

Game isnt even released yet. Everyone expects a wipe at release + language barrier, alpha UI and no tutorial make up for many bad reviews. A polished UI with support of multiple languages and a working tutorial and a nice new player experience with a proper wipe at release will work wonders I think

I think another wipe will probably keep even more folks from coming back. Every time they wipe the game more people go and never come back. Plus it would be even harder on new players having to compete with veterans who know how to make money and are after all the skill books and modules again. Prices for most have come down a lot.... wipe the game and your back at every book and module being worth millions again.

every wipe has decreased pvp availability and made the game that much less fun.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Malachy

[Malachy]

19 minutes ago, rediii said:

Last wipe we jumped from 600 online to 1000 online on pvp eu. Every wipe players go and new ones come back

For me the last (and only wipe I experienced in NA) increased the fun

A wipe increases the will for newer players to come and try the game because they know other players dont have everything when they join the game

Prices came down again because people dont care about money anymore. After the last wipe NA was made hardcore. I personally enjoyed it because the markrt was working since money was worth something. Now you just dont care if you sell something or not and I personally dont calculate prices anymore and I only produce something so other players that need cannons are not hello kittyed

Skillbooks I kinda agree, maybe that shouldnt be wiped since people worked long for them

Population spiked briefly but pvpers decreased exponentially. Again, people who hang in the protected areas all the time don't contribute to the end game and may as well not be there as far as I'm concerned. Pvper numbers decreased quite abit. I can count 40 people that I played with or against regularly that no longer play because they refused to go through that grind again to get books and mods.

[Hethwill]

Redii, I think you misundertood and really took it the wrong way.

If I am not mistaken Des Moines refered that the wipe would never be a wipe - fair for everyone new and old - and if we keep even xp we start ahead already.

 

[Malachy]

30 minutes ago, rediii said:

It was pvp heaven. Actually we decreased the population by having too many pvp players at that time

That wasn't my experience. Pvp dropped off considerably after the wipe and never recovered. The so called new folks that were supposed to shore up numbers learned that there is no reason to venture out of the safe zones. So when the veterans got fed up with the grind, no one replaced them. Hence this thread. 

Where is blackjack Morgan? Shrouded recluse? Sir Robert Calder, a litany of others? Gone. And not likely to return even for launch. 

Bad anti gank policy and the endless grind have turned off so many players I can't even keep count. With already faltering numbers, the developers may want to think long and hard before wiping more than just ships and gold. The only way I'd do the grind again would be if they made a pure pvp server without all the safe zones and pve protection bullshit.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Malachy

[Malachy]

7 minutes ago, rediii said:

Safezones werent even included after the wipe dude. They are pretty "new". From that I would say you have no clue man.

After the wipe you could go to a capital area and stay there until you got driven away by a revengefleet. You had multiple battles a day. Only after every pvp overfished france, GB and PR area it dropped down to 600 or so players. Safezones came in when it was already down and stabilized the playercount on the server

Actually they came right around the wipe. The wipe was only a few months back. Safe zones have been around quite awhile. Before the wipe, it's as you said, after pvp died down considerably. So much now that during primetime you can sail for 4 hours and not engage a single target and sit in kpr harbor and watch full groups sail by you and not even dream of hitting you.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Malachy

[Malachy]

38 minutes ago, rediii said:

Safezones came a while after the wipe. Months after the wipe I would say.

1. wipe

2. pvp heaven, overrishing by pvp players also due to pvp marks (me included, i made hundreds back then)

3. population decreased rather fast, qlso because eco was so hard. Ressources were hard to get and prices for everything were high. Realy hard start.

4. after population was down for a while safezones and easier eco came

 

I think the hard eco together with overfiwhing by pvp players played the biggest role why population went down. Had nothing to do with the wipe, actually way more players played the game after the whipe

The hard eco and lack of ability to raise funds to replace ships didn't help anything that's for sure. More logged in, i don't think it helped at all. In the long term the wipe was catastrohic, especially paired with 1 durability ships and all the other changes that have been detrimental to the overall health of the game. I know when you lose a battle, even now, having to stop an refit and or rebuild a replacement is annoying. Used to be, if I lost I was right back out there, now, I'm done for the day.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Malachy

[Vernon Merrill]

*Sits all day in front of KPR*

 

*Kills any Noob who dares come out of the "Safe Zone*

 

*Talks mad shit and tells opponents how much they suck and need to "get gud"....*

 

*Wonders why people dont want to PvP and leave the game....*

 

*Calls everyone "Carebears" and trashes game mechanics*

 

*Rage-quits?*

[Hethwill]

Even in no loss, arena games people avoid fighting like they avoid the plague. We cannot find scapegoats on mechanics when humans use the mechanics to enforce/avoid fights.

Maybe, just maybe, there's this idea of the "holy grail of pvp" ship, which is true. All kinky modules and refits and whatnot...

Maybe, just maybe, if those options, in very tiny degrees, would be a integral part of the ship crafting and accessible by all...

... wouldn't change human mind but at least the way the ships are built and equipped would be more streamlined and not forcefully linked to "loot drops".

I know a lot of MMO players like those drop mechanics though, but i come to think at the moment we are more of a mix of ego-shooting and historical crowd in healthy doses of pvp and pve in the pvp servers. Duelists got Legends, which is a fine product.

Time to move on and deliver the persistent world more "meat". We got the bone and sinew already.

[Malachy]

The thing game labs needs to remember. There are other games that appeal to their player base. I personally am looking at Wild West online and there are a couple other period games out there too. Keep screwing over your hardcore players, you won't have a game.

 

The other day I sat in Belize harbor. The "great" Batman himself sailed right past me twice and entered missions. If the situation had been reversed and a pirate who had called me a skill less waste of space in game had been sitting there alone, I'd have gone back in port, grabbed a ship and attacked the son of a bitch. That's the sort of players hiding in safe zones, not noobs. There are very few noobs in this game. That right there is the difference between a carebear and a pvper.