Lobby / Queueing System

[Liq]

Now that Naval Action Legends is being put on hold, the game will now have to tolerate both "fractions" again - Those that just want a pure OW experience, and those aiming to get more or less even fights for an enjoyable time.

A Lobby / Queueing system would be much welcomed IMO. Sum-up of some reason:

• Getting "good" pvp is a pain.
  • Battles in Reinforcment zones stay open for 30 minutes - even IF you get tagged by them in their safe zone, they will still have 30 minutes to bring in reinforcments, which, obviously, is BS.
  • Same goes for PvP events. There may be a BR-limit, but that pretty much also tells you HOW / in what fleet you got to PvP - no more lone frigate raiding. Say you get yourself a frigate duel in the zone, great. Now after 20 min, 10 4th rates join the enemy side. Good Game (?)
  • Port battles? Meh - Got to grind up HORRIBLY boring hostility, and have the actual battle happening a day later - without guarantee that you will even get a fight, as ports are now useless and cost way too much.

I simply miss the good old days where you could sail around in a medicore sized frigate, attack other frigates without having to worry about IMBA reinforcment 1st rates to spawn in, or have enemies join half an hour later.

Pretty simple, set your settings, 1v1 2v2 3v3 etc., ships or BR limit, perhaps a wager, and you're good to go. Get a notification when someone takes your proposed battle settings, and you got a fight. Perhaps ship-loss and / or rewards can also be set in the options, as many now simply want a good fight and dont care about marks or whatever.

To compare, AoE2's lobby system. (Pretty simple, but it works)

 

Edited March 25, 2018 by Liq

[z4ys]

In my opinion patrols are the better way to integrate moba players into the game. But instead of try to make them suit the sandbox players they should appeal in the first place to the NAL players. Lobbies should only be used for challenges and tournaments. RvR has to be made usefull to suit sandbox gameplay again.

[GrubbyZebra]

Please stop encouraging the devs to make NA into NA:L (yes, realise that Sea Trials was essentially NA:L and NA is based on Sea Trials). 

What will result will neither please arena-style fast action type nor OW sandbox types.

They don't need to be separate games (you can incorporate the lobby-style gameplay within the "missions" tab in NA), but NA needs to get OW and the economy/trade system developed to really shine before any more arena combat functions are added.

[Liq]

6 minutes ago, BPHick said:

What will result will neither please arena-style fast action type nor OW sandbox types.

how do you know?

In NAL's alpha testing stage, there was a duel option - I really enjoyed that one, fight after fight - 10 a day was the max you could do. Why not expand it to 2v2 3v3 4v4 etc. ?

[Christendom]

All I know is I played legends briefly and was bored of the same fights over and over.  The beauty of this game has and always will be in the hunt and the chase.  Legends cannot replicate that.  The patrol zones also diminish this

[Trino]

Yes, this makes sense. NAL flopped so letzt turn NA in something like NAL ...

Kafkaesque ...

 

 

Edit: Pleas do it. Implement the Lobby. TEST it, make it exactly as they want it ! But EVALUATE it after 4 weeks ... and draw consequences ...

Edited March 25, 2018 by Trino

[Guest]

I'm not terribly interested in any kind of lobby, but I wholeheartedly agree with the OP about missing the days of sailing a lone frigate out and getting nice fights. It seems like all the action is in a zone, or directly outside the docks of a free port lately... I miss the days of being able to go on a long sail and finding fights along the way. 

[GrubbyZebra]

3 hours ago, Liq said:

how do you know?

In NAL's alpha testing stage, there was a duel option - I really enjoyed that one, fight after fight - 10 a day was the max you could do. Why not expand it to 2v2 3v3 4v4 etc. ?

because it will remove people from OW, which will cause OW to suffer, and the fact that the arena game has to still support an OW sandbox means that there will be mechanics in place to do just that, which will negatively impact the arena-style instant action. 

i.e., both games will suffer due to the necessary compromises required to support such disparate systems, and people will get frustrated and leave.

Edited March 25, 2018 by BPHick

[Fenris]

5 hours ago, Christendom said:

The beauty of this game has and always will be in the hunt and the chase.  Legends cannot replicate that.

Good point.

[NethrosDefectus]

7 hours ago, z4ys said:

In my opinion patrols are the better way to integrate moba players into the game. But instead of try to make them suit the sandbox players they should appeal in the first place to the NAL players. Lobbies should only be used for challenges and tournaments. RvR has to be made usefull to suit sandbox gameplay again.

Sorry but NAL was a failure, so why should this game have to change to appease the few that played it? Let's face it, the devs were over ambitious with trying to run the two games side by side and only one was ever going to survive. If as many players enjoyed that style of play as people are claiming to justify their lineship gank zones then THIS would've been the game that failed, not NAL. 

Yes combat news is probably more active since the introduction of the zones, but it's the not epic fights to the death that I think the devs envisioned, more that a large group at of line ships attacks a smaller group or solo ship, quickly dispatches with it and then moves onto the next. Or on the very rare occasion you get a couple of frigates in their fighting each other, previously mentioned large line ship group will join that battle.

Edited March 25, 2018 by NethrosDefectus

[Batman]

Go play Legends

 

oh wait, nvm

[Liq]

6 hours ago, Christendom said:

All I know is I played legends briefly and was bored of the same fights over and over.  The beauty of this game has and always will be in the hunt and the chase.  Legends cannot replicate that.  The patrol zones also diminish this

because NAL did not have any battleoption settings whatsoever - At some point duels were added, they were great. But it needed a Lobby.

A Proper lobby system where you can choose your setup would give you all the battle variety you could ask for. Basically PBs on demand, if you wanted to.

Now I see, the Sandbox players wouldnt enjoy that either, because "Battles have to be meaningful and have an impact" - that's where sandbox and moba opinions seperate, I guess.

[vazco]

9 hours ago, Liq said:

Now that Naval Action Legends is being put on hold, the game will now have to tolerate both "fractions" again - Those that just want a pure OW experience, and those aiming to get more or less even fights for an enjoyable time.

A Lobby / Queueing system would be much welcomed IMO. Sum-up of some reason:

• Getting "good" pvp is a pain.
  • Battles in Reinforcment zones stay open for 30 minutes - even IF you get tagged by them in their safe zone, they will still have 30 minutes to bring in reinforcments, which, obviously, is BS.
  • Same goes for PvP events. There may be a BR-limit, but that pretty much also tells you HOW / in what fleet you got to PvP - no more lone frigate raiding. Say you get yourself a frigate duel in the zone, great. Now after 20 min, 10 4th rates join the enemy side. Good Game (?)
  • Port battles? Meh - Got to grind up HORRIBLY boring hostility, and have the actual battle happening a day later - without guarantee that you will even get a fight, as ports are now useless and cost way too much.

I simply miss the good old days where you could sail around in a medicore sized frigate, attack other frigates without having to worry about IMBA reinforcment 1st rates to spawn in, or have enemies join half an hour later.

Pretty simple, set your settings, 1v1 2v2 3v3 etc., ships or BR limit, perhaps a wager, and you're good to go. Get a notification when someone takes your proposed battle settings, and you got a fight. Perhaps ship-loss and / or rewards can also be set in the options, as many now simply want a good fight and dont care about marks or whatever.

To compare, AoE2's lobby system. (Pretty simple, but it works)

 

I agree with the problem you describe, however I think such fights could be supported in OW, not in lobby - eg through a mission you take (as a group if you want), which spawns a counter mission for anyone with s same BR to take in the same region - giving both players some direction of where to find their enemy and some incentive to fight with even BR. 

Edited March 25, 2018 by vazco

[Cmdr RideZ]

Back to where we were in 2016, still the best option.

Tune ROE and test signaling perk for all.

I would start from signaling perk.

[fox2run]

Maybe we should drop the idea of land in battles and then make a proper timebased ROE. 

If you join an on going battles you spawn further away.

That would solve a lot of issues imho.

[Anne Wildcat]

Maybe bring back the small and large battles with no loss and also no reward?

[Anne Wildcat]

1 hour ago, fox2run said:

Maybe we should drop the idea of land in battles and then make a proper timebased ROE. 

If you join an on going battles you spawn further away.

That would solve a lot of issues imho.

Try the PVP missions. They stay open. 

I wish the PVP missions shared the same mechanics as open world attacks outside the event zone. 

[Christendom]

4 hours ago, Liq said:

because NAL did not have any battleoption settings whatsoever - At some point duels were added, they were great. But it needed a Lobby.

A Proper lobby system where you can choose your setup would give you all the battle variety you could ask for. Basically PBs on demand, if you wanted to.

Now I see, the Sandbox players wouldnt enjoy that either, because "Battles have to be meaningful and have an impact" - that's where sandbox and moba opinions seperate, I guess.

Problem is this isn’t an arcade style game. Mixing the two won’t work.  Even the patrol zones diminish OW PvP.  Unless you’re on the east coast of course.  People like to hunt, grief and gank their way across the Caribbean like a true full loot mmo.

As far as legends goes, I don’t think the combat is fast paced enough to make that style of game viable within the NA world.  I just sailed around in cutters and brigs till I said screw it and logged off.

[Captiva]

5 hours ago, Liq said:

because NAL did not have any battleoption settings whatsoever - At some point duels were added, they were great. But it needed a Lobby.

Duels were the best addition to NAL, by far. It was the single feature that brought me back to trying NAL.  

[jodgi]

10 hours ago, Trino said:

...NAL flopped...

 

5 hours ago, NethrosDefectus said:

Sorry but NAL was a failure...

This is a bitter pill. People are going to hold this over my head stating it as God's own truth. This is my life now...

None of us were privy to the internal discussion they had concerning NA:L, we only know what admin told us. He hinted at two factors: The closed alpha player retention and the challenges posed by chasing two rabbits, as he put it.

It didn't surprise me to see player count fall off steeply. People tried it out, liked it or not, and decided based on their experience if they intended to come back after the release wipe. I never intended to grind further than connie, then to play as online playerbase allowed and in any case try out new feature as they were up for testing. So even me, Legends' biggest fan, didn't play much and you could say I contributed to the decision to put Legends on hold. This is why some of us say the player retention test was "failed" or "rigged".

Noone knows how well or badly NA:L would have fared after a proper Free To Play release. I think Legends would do so well it would spell trouble for OW, but it's speculation just as "Legends failed" is speculation.

The other factor we can't do much about. 

10 hours ago, Christendom said:

All I know is I played legends briefly and was bored of the same fights over and over.

This is ok. Arena play works for most players but not everyone. (I'm assuming we can agree on the fact that arena games are the most populated, by far)

11 hours ago, Christendom said:

The beauty of this game has and always will be in the hunt and the chase.  Legends cannot replicate that...

I completely agree. I so looked forward to this aspect during Sea Trials. For me it's still true but the cons far outweight the pros. Personal taste and opinion. I weigh the hunt and the chase 1/10 and quality pvp (ideally equal force and numbers) 10/1.

11 hours ago, Christendom said:

...The patrol zones also diminish this

Hmm... I've seen this before. Are you sure? I didn't participate much at all in OW activities but now I'm trying to make patrols work. It's still mostly a super-gank but at least noone is running. Now I'm there sailing the OW albeit in a limited capacity. Isn't that better than me just logging in, clicking out mats for Laik and Turpos, and logging out?

Have you tried hunting the patrol ingress and egress? That is full-on sandbox stuff, no?

My steam contact list is mostly made up by people who gave up. When we get more pieces of Legends features baked into OW many of those will return. Is it still a bad thing for you? The more the merrier, or?

I'm more guilty than most of the polarization between the pure-pvp group and the sandbox crowd. I can not resist teasing. But aren't we better off accomodating both groups? I won't interfere with your ganks or your landgrab and you don't have to enter the silly walled garden inside the sandbox.

[jodgi]

1 hour ago, Christendom said:

Mixing the two won’t work

You think.

1 hour ago, Christendom said:

People like to hunt, grief and gank their way across the Caribbean like a true full loot mmo.

heh, at least you're brutally honest. I'm not convinced this is sustainable as far as keeping people coming back is concerned. Could be, tho.

 

1 hour ago, Christendom said:

 I just sailed around in cutters and brigs till I said screw it and logged off.

Completely agree.

1 hour ago, Christendom said:

As far as legends goes, I don’t think the combat is fast paced enough to make that style of game viable within the NA world.

It is for me. Maybe I'm not as short-bus special as people make me out to be?

35 minutes ago, Captiva said:

Duels were the best addition to NAL, by far. It was the single feature that brought me back to trying NAL.  

I think the same. They've already announced bringing tournaments back into NA, I'm sure that will include duels in addition to smaller skirmishes. Bitching and moaning won't stop it, so we will experience how popular or not it will be. I will be there.

[Landsman]

18 minutes ago, jodgi said:

This is a bitter pill. People are going to hold this over my head stating it as God's own truth. This is my life now...

None of us were privy to the internal discussion they had concerning NA:L, we only know what admin told us. He hinted at two factors: The closed alpha player retention and the challenges posed by chasing two rabbits, as he put it.

It didn't surprise me to see player count fall off steeply. People tried it out, liked it or not, and decided based on their experience if they intended to come back after the release wipe. I never intended to grind further than connie, then to play as online playerbase allowed and in any case try out new feature as they were up for testing. So even me, Legends' biggest fan, didn't play much and you could say I contributed to the decision to put Legends on hold. This is why some of us say the player retention test was "failed" or "rigged".

Noone knows how well or badly NA:L would have fared after a proper Free To Play release. I think Legends would do so well it would spell trouble for OW, but it's speculation just as "Legends failed" is speculation.

The other factor we can't do much about. 

I think the real reason why they ditched NAL was, because they realized the people that would go to Legends wouldn't have any reason to come back to the time waste of NA. Sure some who would have tried NAL may have become interested in the OW version but more a exception than the rule. MOBAs are just more popular.

NAL failed is a pretty retarded thing to say. If NAL failed then NA failed that x100. Look at the number of players that tried NA and how many are currently playing? So only a dumbass would say NAL was a failure but NA isn't. Both games are just in the testing stage.

[OneEyedSnake]

5 hours ago, Landsman said:

I think the real reason why they ditched NAL was, because they realized the people that would go to Legends wouldn't have any reason to come back to the time waste of NA. Sure some who would have tried NAL may have become interested in the OW version but more a exception than the rule. MOBAs are just more popular.

NAL failed is a pretty retarded thing to say. If NAL failed then NA failed that x100. Look at the number of players that tried NA and how many are currently playing? So only a dumbass would say NAL was a failure but NA isn't. Both games are just in the testing stage.

I went to NAL, queued for hours. Only ever fought 2 players. Hundreds of bots. Realized I missed sailing around for hours rather than staring at a countdown for hours.

came to the conclusion both games need a much larger playerbase.

[Liq]

I dont understand why it would drag players away from OW.

Players interested in quick accessible battles already dont sail the OW - when we had the daily small battle challenge you saw a lot of names just logging in for that one battle and then log out again. They had no interest in ganking / getting ganked and most importantly wasting time in OW.

Another thing I dont understand is the "meaningful PvP" all the sandbox lovers keep talking about. Meaningful in what way? Safezones with battles open 24/7 made it impossible to harass nations in their backyards. The only way of pvp that comes to my mind is freeports and pvp events, where players from all nations bring ships they are willing to risk, to have fun. Now if they lose that ship, sht happens, no big deal as it was disposable actively brought to that place.

[Potemkin]

Not advocating turning NA into NA legends but the old small battle challenges were quite fun and despite the autistic screaming of some people, never took away from OW action. In fact with ships only being one durability now and with the number of ship slots putting a limit on ship stockpiling, the old small battle room (or fleet practice room as it is now) would only increase ow trader traffic/ demand for player built ships/repairs. Just bring back .5x rewards for the fleet practice and make it so theres only one event every 2 hours or so. Would at least give people who dont have a zerg blob to sail with in the pvp event zones an option to take out a ship worth fighting in. Just a suggestion on a possible way to bridge the gap between the two games and to try to bring a few NAL players back into the fold.

Edited March 25, 2018 by Potemkin