PORT TIMERS

[King of Crowns]

So we have had a month now with these timers and something unexpected has happened. The outstanding cost for the port timers has had some unexpected effects on the game. 

1. inflation is being controlled now, and gold is valuable again.

2. traders and econ guys within the clan have now become some of the most important members of your clan.

3. traders and econ guys now have a reason to make as much money as they can.

4. more port battles are available to US time zone players. 

So perhaps the cost for the timers is a really good thing in the long term of the game. I hate loosing the ports that we couldn't be there to defend and WO lost more ports than any other clan since this mechanic was put into place, but these positive features make it okay IMO.

I do thing the current victory mark mechanic is unsatisfactory and is a major reason why there has been less PBS. perhaps this will change if we have that new pvp/vic mark store added to create more of a demand for victory marks. paints would prolly do the trick to make more PBS happen. 

Edited April 2, 2018 by King of Crowns

[HachiRoku]

13 minutes ago, King of Crowns said:

I do think the current victory mark mechanic is unsatisfactory and is a major reason why there has been less PBS

maybe its because France has PB timers on timezones that are as we call them "Go F*** yourself timers" You will never get port battles at 4-7 am so good luck never having a decent fight again. 

The reason people are not doing port battles is because noone can be arsed to farm ai fleets. Remove that and there will be more, simply from people looking for biff. 

[King of Crowns]

1 minute ago, HachiRoku said:

maybe its because France has PB timers on timezones that are as we call them "Go F*** yourself timers" You will never get port battles at 4-7 am so good luck never having a decent fight again. 

The reason people are not doing port battles is because noone can be arsed to farm ai fleets. Remove that and there will be more, simply from people looking for biff. 

that's when we are strongest. WO and BLANC are unopposed and almost undefeated (1port, hat island) during that timezone. the point of the timer is to set the port when it can be best defended yes? 

[King of Crowns]

WO has lost 9 ports because they were attacked in timezones that we couldn't defend. so we know the story. 

[HachiRoku]

4 minutes ago, King of Crowns said:

that's when we are strongest. WO and BLANC are unopposed and almost undefeated (1port, hat island) during that timezone. the point of the timer is to set the port when it can be best defended yes? 

at 23-2 they wont be. Its simple man. all the US players I know say your timers are crazy late. You set timers for protection. We set them for content. NA is a community driven game. Nothing will ever change that but us. 

[King of Crowns]

4 minutes ago, HachiRoku said:

at 23-2 they wont be. Its simple man. all the US players I know say your timers are crazy late. You set timers for protection. We set them for content. NA is a community driven game. Nothing will ever change that but us. 

23-2 IS to early for us. many of our guys are central and west coast. 2-reset is our most populated times. 

[Guest]

Simple solution: Regional servers.

[staun]

No matter if there are a timer on ore not. In general ppl from the different timezones are not going to fight each other. So yes more ports for the US players. But more battles, don't think there will be. So if the US just want port, they should be fine with the ports without timer. But if they want fights, well that I think will be another story.

[Sir Texas Sir]

46 minutes ago, King of Crowns said:

23-2 IS to early for us. many of our guys are central and west coast. 2-reset is our most populated times. 

Dude I'm central 2am port battles is to late for most normal folks even on west coast which would be midnight.  Your timers are set when most normal folks in US of all three time zones go off to bed cause they have to work in the morning.  

As for loosing ports?  What ports have WO lost recently?  I can think of 1 or two none important ones, but if anything you gained a few ports recently.   Don't be counting the other french ports, but the ports you lost was cause of the location and no timers.   Now who lost ports a lot was RSC lost 13-14 ports in the Bahamas, but they also had retarded way early port timers for every one but the AUS/SEA players and that was late for them.   

I get you want to be protected, but you set your ports in a time zone you only have as play base in and than complains no one will fight you.   There is a reason we have all the none important shallow ports open.  We want folks to attack us and have fights and than flip them back after wards if we loose them.  That is called content.  We also hope folks will set the off times flips for weekends where EU and US time zone players can join the battle best, it's more an honor system, but we all ready know folks like you and your clan will come and do some off hour flip when we won't be able to have numbers and a good fight.

 

Any one thought it was funny they defended there lower east coast port over a major econ port for the nation causing them to loose Estros than to let there own port go into a PB the next day and than defend it.  I bet if WO/BLANC had showed up to Estros they would of been able to defend it.  Than showed up to the port battle the next day to defend there own port they prob would of won that one too as US players for the most part just aren't up to par for the deep water big ship fights yet.  Hard to train them when folks sit our side your capital all night killing newbs.  New players that want to try, but get frustrated and than stop playing after loosing half a dozen ships or more to guys like KoC and his crew.  I know we use to do the exact same thing with BLACK on global and than wonder where all the players went.  You can't over farm your victims and than expect them to keep throwing ships at you.  Sooner or later they will just stop logging in and playing any more.

[admin]

1 hour ago, HachiRoku said:

The reason people are not doing port battles is because noone can be arsed to farm ai fleets. Remove that and there will be more, simply from people looking for biff. 

There must be a method to raise hostility when players do not come to pvp around the port
PVE provides the simples and un-abusable method to raise hostility (we love flags but it is impossible to solve all potential abuse with flags). Same with stationary blockades - it is hard or expensive (from the tech perspective). 
We do want to find out the way to improve this but unfortunately current priorities force 

Maybe loot should be added to won port battles (to make this pve hostility more bearable)

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 hour ago, King of Crowns said:

So we have had a month now with these timers and something unexpected has happened. The outstanding cost for the port timers has had some unexpected effects on the game. 

1. inflation is being controlled now, and gold is valuable again. It's nice to have a gold sink for things other than out bidding every one.  Though sadly most of the ECON Kings are not in RvR clans so they aren't paying most of the bills.  

2. traders and econ guys within the clan have now become some of the most important members of your clan. Again only if they are in a RvR clan. I sold three 1st rates to toss money into the bank from my global redeemabls to cover our cost and than won't have to worry about the ports cost for a while.  The guy that donated the most has been doing so with money he's getting from grinding out slots on his first 1st rate since he just ranked up.  OLD player that just return to game.   It's not the econ guys supporting our ports.  Those are all the guys that hello kittyed up timers and dropped ports last week.  It was econ guys and econ clans that couldn't figure how to do that stuff cause they never done it before or worried about it.

3. traders and econ guys now have a reason to make as much money as they can. While I'll encourage them to do trade at friendly own ports and such.  The trade goods at Marsh is what is paying for our ports, so all traders are welcome to come trade. I plan to have it open on weekends now that we settled in to do like the Prussian's did with Little Habrour to encourage trade to pay for the ports and some.  Thanks guys and with your market some what low I actually been getting copper this week to make copper plating.  Good work Prussia's on showing how the market could be.  If French had Estro's open like this they would of made a killing in the Gulf. Hopefully the pirates will take hint from the Prussians and do the same.

4. more port battles are available to US time zone players. Most of the fights we dont have been empty/ai ports that are in our time zones.  We fought RSC in there timers on weekends when our US and EU player can get on, keeping those port battles to only weekends so they would be defended and we get a fight, but that went out the window when they pulled out and stop trying to defend them.  Which tends to happen a lot with certain nations when you start to pressure them they just pull out and avoid the fight.  Than go grab empty ports some where else on the map.

So perhaps the cost for the timers is a really good thing in the long term of the game. I hate loosing the ports that we couldn't be there to defend and WO lost more ports than any other clan since this mechanic was put into place, but these positive features make it okay IMO.

I do thing the current victory mark mechanic is unsatisfactory and is a major reason why there has been less PBS. perhaps this will change if we have that new pvp/vic mark store added to create more of a demand for victory marks. paints would prolly do the trick to make more PBS happen. 

The timers and cost aren't bad once you get things figured out.  US lost a lot of ports last week mainly cause of mess ups on parts of certain clans and it cost us most our coast line ports.   We only now have three left.  Would of been nice if the brits fought back in the shallows instead of running up our coast and grabbing bead clan drops in off times we couldn't defend or gain cause they have a more EU early morning player base compared to the US nation.   Now all those ports are in crappy timers when we don't have a large plaeyr base unless we do it on the weekends.  Which means your only going to get one or two port battles a weak from us so don't expect a lot of battles.

We will keep or battles to the shallows and weekends until we get our nation more organized, but if they keep getting farmed to death in front of the capital moral will go down and you won't get fights there either.

[admin]

2 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

We will keep or battles to the shallows and weekends until we get our nation more organized, but if they keep getting farmed to death in front of the capital moral will go down and you won't get fights there either.

Even with reinforcements?

[Sir Texas Sir]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

There must be a method to raise hostility when players do not come to pvp around the port
PVE provides the simples and un-abusable method to raise hostility (we love flags but it is impossible to solve all potential abuse with flags). Same with stationary blockades - it is hard or expensive (from the tech perspective). 
We do want to find out the way to improve this but unfortunately current priorities force 

Maybe loot should be added to won port battles (to make this pve hostility more bearable)

Back on global the best way for other nations to stop the fights when it was based off PvP only was just not to show up and than it was murder to grind the AI.  I think right now the system is better than it has been, though we could do a patrol thing where you gain the points slower, but all you have to do is sit in front of the port to gain them?  That would maybe draw more folks out to fight.  The other problem is there is no way to get hostility down unless you fight...if they run it up to 99% and than go into hidding you can't kill any one to bring it back down.  All they have to do is kill one noob and the port if flipped and you never will know it happend.  There really needs to be a way to counter agro other than PvP.    Patrol missions would work great for this.  If a nation doesn't flip a zone fast than you can go to that port and sit in front and patrol it and it will lower the hostility, but very slow rate.   

Bring back the loot chest with some mods mats in it with a rare chance at something good like a Mod or ship not of that class.   Also bring back paints since they aren't OP and it gives folks that PvP/RvR somethign to trade with the none PvP/RvR guys.

[Sir Texas Sir]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

Even with reinforcements?

Have you been to CT?  There is not reienforcements when you come out of the habor.  So there is a big dead zone to either north or south you have to run and get tagged in before you get back into the reinforcements zone.  Every wonder why ever one comes up there and farms CT?   

Oh we will come out and fight and many guys do, but don't cry when you farm the crap out of it and folks stop coming out to fight back when all they do is get sunk over and over and over again.  Just look at most of the screen shots from French, Prussia, Pirates, GB that come up to CT.  Most of them they are out number and slaughter every ship to the last one.  That doesn't encourage people to play.  Most of these guys are all in the same time zones and refuse to fight each other most the time.  Funny how the elite only fight the weak......

And yes we did this on GLOBAL as BLACK so I know all about it, we farmed the crap out of the US and GB capitals until they stop logging in and than e got bored and stop logging in also.  It doesn't work so we need to stop repeating this.

But I want to give props to all the US players that keep going out and keep getting sunk and keep trying.  They got heart, they got numbers, but they just need time to learn how to not get sunk every time.  They been given so much bad info by the same bad folks that don't RvR/PvP and don't have a clue.  It's not going to happen over night, but if they can be given some breathing room US can prob in some time give back some good fights.

[Sir Texas Sir]

4 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

@Sir Texas Sir Prussia is up for hiring to fight French players. Just give me a call and offer.

We actually don't mind ya'll being down on the coast. When ya'll come up the coast you come in 2-3 mid tier ships and give us a good run for our money.  We still loose a good number of ships but it's not toxic, it's not every night/day and we even some times get one or two of ya'll too.  Those are good healthy fights.

[Aster]

...but all the fights I have seen are in the reinforce zone where the US has more players. If they don't want to fight all they have to do is pay attention for about 1 min on ether side of ctown and they are unkillable.

[vazco]

41 minutes ago, admin said:

There must be a method to raise hostility when players do not come to pvp around the port
PVE provides the simples and un-abusable method to raise hostility (we love flags but it is impossible to solve all potential abuse with flags). Same with stationary blockades - it is hard or expensive (from the tech perspective). 
We do want to find out the way to improve this but unfortunately current priorities force 

Maybe loot should be added to won port battles (to make this pve hostility more bearable)

A few things could improve hostility easily.

Issue:

• it's hard to counter hostility generation, as it takes time to gather people. Usually defenders come at the end, or after a port was flippted. As a result, hostility is PvE

Solution:

• Inform people of hostility generation BEFORE it happens. Inform defender that a battle group of X BR was created for their port. Inform if the group was disbanded to avoid exploits. Don't allow for anyone from outside the group to generate hostility (they can come to battle, but don't generate hostility).
• make it expensive to create hostility mission and disbanding the group afterwards. Make it cheap if the group actually gets to a hostility mission (to avoid exploits)

Result:

• defender will have more time preparing, which will generate more PvP and less PvE
• you can lower limit of damage done to an AI fleet. If defenders don't show up with this extra time, maybe they're not interested in defending
• ports gain new meaning - the closer your port is to an enemy port, the bigger is the surprise and shorter the time for him to prepare

Edited April 2, 2018 by vazco

[RaimundoJoe]

36 minutes ago, admin said:

Even with reinforcements?

Experienced players come organised close to a capital. They keep a bit of distance to begin with and a lone ship gets close and gets tagged by home players thinking they will gwt some easy pvp mark. Then the organised group join the battle and a massacre happens. I learned this the hard way.😁

Still this is less of a problem then the fact that you maybe built your ship with materials you buy in KPR were a teak log cost 6000 gold. There is the frustrsation coming from. 

[Jesper Dahl]

51 minutes ago, admin said:

Even with reinforcements?

Reinforcement area battles are close to letting the fox into the henhouse. Most nations cant defend and the attacker always sits with the upper hand. 1 player against AI + enemy squad.

And even if you get reinforcement the original player usually dies and without fast ships the enemy squad will simply sail away.

I cant imagine it being a good experience for new players, it´s safer to attack ships outside the reinforcement area than inside. Unless its the inner capital area circle.

My suggestion is to make all the reinforcement zone into a capital area style zone. However at the same time reduce all zones to cover 1 or 2 cities instead.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Jesper Dahl
Wording

[King of Crowns]

1 hour ago, Lars Kjaer said:

Simple solution: Regional servers.

been there done that. failed. will not work and will cost the devs more money. and will divide an already small playerbase. 

[King of Crowns]

1 hour ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Dude I'm central 2am port battles is to late for most normal folks even on west coast which would be midnight.  Your timers are set when most normal folks in US of all three time zones go off to bed cause they have to work in the morning.  

As for loosing ports?  What ports have WO lost recently?  I can think of 1 or two none important ones, but if anything you gained a few ports recently.   

 

your idea of normal is offensive to me. I know when our players play. we lost all of our ports on northern Haiti and we lost all of our ports in the great corn area. I know ur USA so you don't get out of your reinforce zone much. 

[King of Crowns]

19 minutes ago, AxIslander said:

Experienced players come organised close to a capital. They keep a bit of distance to begin with and a lone ship gets close and gets tagged by home players thinking they will gwt some easy pvp mark. Then the organised group join the battle and a massacre happens. I learned this the hard way.😁

Battles like these while a lot of fun are not easy. and the fact that its right infront of their capital means that they can have a huge amount of players join in w/e ships they want. there should be responsibility of the vets and clans of a nation to defend its capital. No large clan hunts in front of FR during our timezone... and the fleet of princes and cutters used by vco and lionshaft don't count. its extremely risky to get pulled in the reinforce zone. but it has made for some of the best battles I have had in NA. afterall its just ships that are worth little to nothing anyway. 

[King of Crowns]

1 hour ago, admin said:

Maybe loot should be added to won port battles (to make this pve hostility more bearable)

or you could just make the ports more valuable or customizable. a place for the clans to call home. The pve grind sucks but the sytem does work. it is possible to stop some one from attacking your port and it creates pvp. so hostility does suck but it is working. 

[vazco]

3 minutes ago, King of Crowns said:

Battles like these while a lot of fun are not easy. and the fact that its right infront of their capital means that they can have a huge amount of players join in w/e ships they want. there should be responsibility of the vets and clans of a nation to defend its capital. No large clan hunts in front of FR during our timezone... and the fleet of princes and cutters used by vco and lionshaft don't count. its extremely risky to get pulled in the reinforce zone. but it has made for some of the best battles I have had in NA. afterall its just ships that are worth little to nothing anyway. 

You should think about bringing more 3rd rates and less 1st rates, then you can get a bit more even battles. This what you show here is a skill-gank. It's not "one of the best battles", it's more or less seal clubbing.

I guess difference between us and you is that we compose our fleet in a way that allows us to get sank from time to time.

[King of Crowns]

2 minutes ago, vazco said:

You should think about bringing more 3rd rates and less 1st rates, then you can get a bit more even battles. This what you show here is a skill-gank. It's not "one of the best battles", it's more or less seal clubbing.

I guess difference between us and you is that we compose our fleet in a way that allows us to get sank from time to time.

do you not see that they have 2 1st rates? and that they outnumber us almost 2:1. we only have 1 more 1st rate than them. if you think we are so easy to kill your welcome to stay up late one night and come to navase.