bridge the gap between the pvpers and everyone else and breathe new life into the game

[thanatos-tg]

When i happened upon Naval Action, I was ecstatic, I love age of sail games and all of the fun from bringing a full broadside of guns to bear to going toe to toe on deck of boarding to hammering/getting hammered by a city port or fort, when i joined i loved all of it, the beauty, the semi realism, the semi true sailing, and all that.  now that being said the pvp is a little over kill, its great and all but really annoying when people just camp outside the capital for new players just to get their pvp marks and getting those marks gives them an almost unbreakable edge over anyone without. so here are some suggestions that might make all happy and would be willing to actually discuss things in farther if warranted.

 

1. first off to the pvp thing, make it so if you are in the capital port (Charleston for US) that you get capital class ships to protect you (I.E. 3 - 1 st rates depending on strength of enemy). everywhere else, unless you are tagged by a capital ship you only get up to a 4th rate and it matches the strength of the attacking ship.

2. now adding to the historical aspect that would really put a fun twist to the game and give you a little more national pride.  Players can only CRAFT ships of their country (US gets the Connie and other US based ships) and ai fleets will only spawn with their nations ships (spain wouldn't spawn with a connie) and by ships of their country i mean the country that originally built the ship.

- note give ALL nations a baseline ships for example:

• 7th rate - Cutter, sloops
• 6th rate - brig, schooner
• 5th rate - frigate
• 4th rate through 1st rate - ships of the line

now the 4th rate would have about 50 guns with a crew of about 400(max)

3rd rate would have around 74 guns or less with a crew around 650(max)

2nd rate would have around 80 - 90 guns with crew around 800(max)

1st rate would have about 100 guns with crew of around 1000(max)

 

from there you add in your l'oceans, essexs, and all the other ships/ ship types would be nation dependent.

 

3.  PVP marks, #2 would factor heavily into this category,  your pvp marks instead of giving game breaking upgrades instead, give out notes for ships of different nations but instead of making it 15 marks make it harder to get certain ships for example:

• 7th rate - 10 marks
• 6th rate - 15 - 20 marks
• 5th rate - 40 - 50 marks
• 4th - 50 - 75 marks
• 3rd - 75 - 100 marks
• 2nd - 100 - 125 marks
• 1st - 150 marks

but on the side note make it so these notes could not be used to craft one out White oak, teak, or live oak.

 

4.  Both of those now would make this possible and give the ability to capture 4 - 1st rates again because you would have to try to capture other nations ships from AI but make the AI fleets to spawn in out of really crappy material so that capturing them isnt necessarily a big win.

 

Overall I feel this would help greatly in bringing your game population back up, adding new players because there isn't so much seal clubbing but you can get respectable pvp action outside of the capital harbours.   it would also give a new feel to the game because Port battles would have to be won by the skill of the nation using their ships or stolen ships and you would have to plan around your nations strengths.  now it would be easy to navigate around this feat simply by having multiple alts in different nations, but to counter it and make it a little more challenging and rare to see a quality 1st rate or 2nd rate (instead of 50 WO/LO or similar in a port battle) make them a little more difficult to craft something of that caliber

like i said this is observations that i have seen while playing and i feel that all the player base would enjoy these updates and would bring your population up greatly as well, and like i said if you would like to discuss this more, i would be happy to in teamspeak or discord or just through email, and anything i could do to help this i would

[Sang Noir]

Hi Thanatos, thank you for your post. Sorry that I don't go into your suggestions in detail, because I think that instead of further micro-managing PVP, the game could use some content in other areas like trading, exploration and story.

[Aster]

Ships will just be traded among players and their alt accounts. Also people do pvp outside capital areas because there is no where else to do pvp. You can sail around the map for hours without seeing a player and no one wants to do that.

[vazco]

14 hours ago, thanatos-tg said:

really annoying when people just camp outside the capital for new players just to get their pvp marks and getting those marks gives them an almost unbreakable edge over anyone without

People camp outside of capitals not for marks, but to get some battle. ANY battle. Upgrades which you get from PvP marks are useless - I don't use them at all. Only some upgrades which you can get only from PvE are somewhat useful.

14 hours ago, thanatos-tg said:

first off to the pvp thing, make it so if you are in the capital port (Charleston for US) that you get capital class ships to protect you (I.E. 3 - 1 st rates depending on strength of enemy). everywhere else, unless you are tagged by a capital ship you only get up to a 4th rate and it matches the strength of the attacking ship.

If someone fixes PvP zones, I'm all for it - even don't allow to attack a ship in a protected zone - simple and clear. If PvP zone is not fixed before that though, it would completely kill the current game population. I would quit, and so many others would.

[Palatinose]

1 hour ago, vazco said:

People camp outside of capitals not for marks, but to get some battle. ANY battle.

To be fair both exists. Join a battle in front of Mortimer on Pirate side (or probably any capital on national side) and you will get messages - and I quote various players here - like: "Really?" "WTF why not against pirates?" "Why man, I'm just here to farm marks". Ofc there is also those desperately searching for any pvp. E.g. the area between Tortue, Navasse and Mortimer should offer some targets. What if you don't find them? Ah damn whats our options? Really the safe zone? You know what's it gonna end like. Okay let's have a look but we won't fight inside the zone. Half an hour and three attempts to get some foes leaving the safe zone you either end up leaving or lowering your expectations from a somewhat controllable fight to one inside the zone where its pretty sure that you get wrecked. But hey it's PvP so still better than no fight at all.

[thanatos-tg]

sorry it took me so long to get back was working and other busy stuff, but

@Jean de la Rochelle  I do agree with you and this would help add more content by adding more ships but yes they do need to get more trading, story lines, and things like that into the game maybe even for the new people instead of doing the exam tutorial do a small story line of how you earned your captainship and such and give a small perk base on it. one of the glaring issues though is there isn't a playerbase to provide a stable economy because you get seal clubbed right outside of your capital harbour by someone who has a full unboxed ship maxed out on upgrades when you are running around with bare minimum because you just started.

@Aster yes i said that in the post that there would be ways around it and there is not a whole lot you can do about it, people will try to find a way to cheat the system no matter what but this would at least give some the satisfaction of learning their nations ships and their strengths and weaknesses.

@vazco,  if you want just any battle as you claim there are 100's of ai ships that provide more than a challenge if you go into the right fight, hell if you really want a challenge do a 4th rate fleet combat mission it spawns 6 - 8 connies at any given time, good luck, and if they are looking for just any battle then why not go after the rear admirals, or the commodores in the larger upgraded ships, from what I have experienced it is players who actually aren't the greatest at sailing just have a lot of upgrades so their ship is much faster or thicker than something else and they go into fights where they know the player is around a 150 or less combat rating so they can quickly kill and sink him then run away before someone who can actually give him the satisfaction of a challenge shows up. and also for the better part of the day I don't see the combat news quiet for more than 15 - 20 minutes, and taht is pushing it normally it pops up new every 2 - 3 minutes, and doing it this way would give you your challenge of a fight when you wanted it but thats not what PvP's want they want an easy kill and run at the first sight of an actual fight, so they hang around the capital zones and wait for new players to either come out of a combat mission wounded or better yet wait for them to attack an ai fleet then jump in on the other side so you can't even use the reinforcement zone to help you.

also the pvp rewards are by far better than the PvE rewards, yes alot of them offer the same stuff but with none of the penalties for instance the sailing speed, 2 of the PvP upgrades offer just an increase in sailing speed and nothing else no required more crew, or weaker hull, or anything. that gives a significant upgrade over a PvE reward that gives you at most 3% sailing speed but you have to sacrifice like 5% of your hull/armor/ or thickness.

and if you quit that is your choice and only reinforcing the fact that you are not actually looking for a challenge you are looking for someone quick and easy to kill so you get your pvp marks and get your rewards with no risk

@Palatinose you are right there are both sides and yes there are people there just for a fight but are hoping for a weak easy player to kill so they can finish it quickly, and yeah sometimes you go hunting and you don't find any so you make the choice, fight ai out in the ocean to pass time while waiting or risk it, but right now with the RZ they mostly wait for players to get into a fight then jump in behind them so you can't even call for reinforcements from your nation so you are screwed anyway. they have a couple different ways they could fix the RZ this way is just one of the options the other would be that even if say I attacked an AI fleet, and someone jumped in after I can call reinforcements to my aid still to help me

 

[vazco]

10 hours ago, thanatos-tg said:

if you want just any battle as you claim there are 100's of ai ships that provide more than a challenge if you go into the right fight

No, they don't  Even epic events don't provide a challenge, just a repeatable boring fight.

 

10 hours ago, thanatos-tg said:

why not go after the rear admirals, or the commodores in the larger upgraded ships

Let me know where  I fight with such players, but they're also hard to find. You seem to comment on PvP without actually having an experience of doing it. Finding any fight is hard nowadays, takes a huge amount of time and some luck. We need PvP zones fixed.

 

10 hours ago, thanatos-tg said:

also the pvp rewards are by far better than the PvE rewards

No, they are not. For speed, copper plating is best, not navy hull. For thickness, Cartagena, not navy structure. You get the same reload upgrade for 15 PvP marks as for 20 Combat marks.

Don't even get me started on comparison of books. Just check gunnery encyclopedia (PvE-based book) vs eg. Carpenter Combat Reports.

10 hours ago, thanatos-tg said:

you are not actually looking for a challenge you are looking for someone quick and easy to kill

Please don't presume what I'm looking for. I have around 1500 PvP marks, in old days I could get 20 per PvP/RvR battle. Why would I need 40 more?

I just don't get it why some people need to believe in OP upgrades and green zones favouring enemies. Try PvP'ing yourself, you'll be able to experience harsh reality yourself. Then you can comment how easy it is to find a fight.

[Grundgemunkey]

Quote

People camp outside of capitals not for marks, but to get some battle. ANY battle

what rubbish .. all these people using there is no one to fight excuses for camping capitals ... must be my imagination but i thought a dedicated pvp zone appeared every day ... and in a different spot every day so no one could use the " its too far"  excuse

what people really mean ... is there is no one with a lesser skill set than me in pvp zones ... so i prefer capitals were i can club a few  noobs

dont blame the game .. because your scared to fight someone who might beat you ...

[Hethwill]

It is not that one PvE module is better than a PvP one. It is that I can stack both.

[vazco]

2 hours ago, Grundgemunkey said:

all these people using there is no one to fight excuses for camping capitals (...) because your scared to fight someone who might beat you

How come you know better what I want than I do? Please stick to your own experience, don't input me my own experiences.

I want battle, the only kind of battle (lousy one) is around capitals recently. PvP zones are broken.

 

It would be probably best for the game to fix PvP zone and disable an option to fight around capital altogether, in order to direct everyone wanting PvP to a single spot. If reinforcement areas are blocked before PvP zone is fixed though, this game dies.

[vazco]

2 hours ago, Hethwill said:

It is not that one PvE module is better than a PvP one. It is that I can stack both.

You can. Still, the best stacks are fully PvE right now (or non-PvP). I don't want to list them, as I don't want to deprive others from pleasure and satisfaction of finding them on their own  I don't use any PvP mod or book recently (maybe apart from Copper Plating and Navy Hull, but rarely - once per every 20 ships I build).

[Hethwill]

1 minute ago, vazco said:

You can. Still, the best stacks are fully PvE right now (or non-PvP). I don't want to list them, as I don't want to deprive others from pleasure and satisfaction of finding them on their own  I don't use any PvP mod or book recently (maybe apart from Copper Plating and Navy Hull, but rarely - once per every 20 ships I build).

Math doesn't lie, only human nature does. That's why i asked this

 

[Grundgemunkey]

5 minutes ago, vazco said:

How come you know better what I want than I do? Please stick to your own experience, don't input me my own experiences.

I want battle, the only kind of battle (lousy one) is around capitals recently. PvP zones are broken.

 

It would be probably best for the game to fix PvP zone and disable an option to fight around capital altogether, in order to direct everyone wanting PvP to a single spot. If reinforcement areas are blocked before PvP zone is fixed though, this game dies.

well i have to guess because you claim pvp zones are broken but dont explain why you think they are broken ...

[vazco]

5 minutes ago, Grundgemunkey said:

well i have to guess because you claim pvp zones are broken but dont explain why you think they are broken ...

The fact you don't know why they're broken suggests that you don't play the game and don't read the forum. Why bother commenting then? What value does a comment done by someone who doesn't know the game bring?

There's a recent poll by Liquicity, in which 95% people claim they're broken, and post explains why. I suggest you to read it.

[Navalus Magnus]

14 minutes ago, vazco said:

It would be probably best for the game to fix PvP zone and disable an option to fight around capital altogether, in order to direct everyone wanting PvP to a single spot. If reinforcement areas are blocked before PvP zone is fixed though, this game dies.

@admin

That would be a good step forward!

Plus: It would be rather easy to do, isn’t it!?

I really wonder why you haven’t fixed the PvP zone and reinforcement zone problem yet!

 

[Slim McSauce]

3 hours ago, Grundgemunkey said:

what rubbish .. all these people using there is no one to fight excuses for camping capitals ... must be my imagination but i thought a dedicated pvp zone appeared every day ... and in a different spot every day so no one could use the " its too far"  excuse

what people really mean ... is there is no one with a lesser skill set than me in pvp zones ... so i prefer capitals were i can club a few  noobs

dont blame the game .. because your scared to fight someone who might beat you ...

No, blame the game. By design you're meant to camp capitals to find fights.

[Navalus Magnus]

1 hour ago, rediii said:

Priorities

Sometimes I wonder if thier priorities in the last few weeks have been „vacations“!

[Sir Lancelot Holland]

The close/distant blockade of ports, capital or not, is an integral part of Naval warfare, Brest and Cadiz were under blockade throughout the Napoleonic wars unless weather conditions demanded the blockading fleet move to open sea. Yet, the French and Spanish had options open to them. They could come out and fight, they could come out in force to run off the blockading Frigates, break the blockade as Admiral Villeneuve did more than once or they could sit in port as a fleet in being, knowing they could be supplied by land indefinitely.

Were the positions reversed and had Great Britain's ports been under blockade it is very probable Great Britain would have lost the Napoleonic wars,  Indeed twice during the 20th century, Great Britain, despite technically controlling the sea lanes could have lost both world wars. Such could have been the consequences of a successful naval blockade on an Island nation.

The retention of new players is not in the hands of the devs, it is in the hands of the Veteran combat players, if you enter a fight and find yourself against a new player in his shiny new vanilla Merc while you have your tricked out speedboat Endy he is going to lose every time, he will get disheartened and leave the game believing he has no chance to advance in the game. Does it not make more sense to leave the new guy alone, take one of your new guys with you and let them sort it out between themselves, and if per chance another combat veteran intervenes and very likely, they will, there is your fight, with a player who has a better chance, who may give you something better than the slaughter of innocents. By doing this the New player win or lose would believe he has a chance of advancement in the game because he has learned that the combat vets are less likely to use him as pvp mark fodder, that they will stand aside and protect their protégé against his/her peers in opposing nations and would therefore be more likely to stay in the game. The new players learn how to fight in an even contest and the combat vet has the opportunity to win his PVP marks against a more equal opponent(s). 

Perhaps then it is beholden on the clan leaders of all nations to discuss with each other  about at what level a new player should be capable of defending himself, and a gentleman's agreement that ships of the line will not engage frigates and below unless the frigate Captain opens fire first. This is more in keeping with the era in which we fight, such an agreement existed and was honoured  by every combatant nation of the day.

I think it would improve both new player retention and ensure in the case of ships of the line that they become more viable in their use and the battles they fight are more likely to be not only more even but more challenging, battles become the huge line ships  slugging it out, but, with the small ships in their own peripheral battles within a battle.

[Grundgemunkey]

2 hours ago, vazco said:

The fact you don't know why they're broken suggests that you don't play the game and don't read the forum. Why bother commenting then? What value does a comment done by someone who doesn't know the game bring?

There's a recent poll by Liquicity, in which 95% people claim they're broken, and post explains why. I suggest you to read it.

 

2 hours ago, Otto Kohl said:

Because its gank fest, ROE sucks ass, because you are trapped in every battle for 1,5h.

 

see your assuming as well ... im well aware of why other people think its broken ...why bother commenting on my experiences whether i play the game or read the forum when you have no idea of the facts ....

  my experience of battles around kpr ... are its a gank fest where people are trapped in battle for 1 ,5 hours either chasing or been chased .

its no different to pvp zone

[jodgi]

2 hours ago, Grundgemunkey said:

its no different to pvp zone

Except new guys aren't being picked on in patrol zones and the patrols can be made fun relatively easily 

[Cr33D]

Probably 9 out of 10 times while being in the reinforcement zone so called by you "PvP marks farmers" gets tagged by  minimum 3xBR.

Another 1 situation is when this horrible "PVP Marks farmer" will join someone vs AI not knowing in the first place who is that and probably most of the time someone else will join this battle to defend this poor AI tagger, ending with 3xBR advantage. 

What happens next ? Sometimes a lot of people join and "PvP mark farmer" does have no choice and run, sometimes he can't be escape and will fight vs 3-4 or more players, sometimes winning sometimes sinking few of them sometimes not sinking anything and loosing ship. 

In case of loosing ship, "PVP marks farmer" will pick his next ship and sail somewhere to have fun fight. What about someone that sank when had huge advantage ? Usually goes on the forums and complains that modules are too strong, books are too strong, pvp modules are too strong, reinforcement zone is bad, seal clubbing, bla bla bla bla ...... 

 

In general - all experienced players are killing this game ... best thing, stop playing

Edited May 29, 2018 by Cr33D

[Hethwill]

Let's not defend one or the other way of life.

And please be honest, ok ?

Enter Reinforcement Zone, invade battle, rage board. Disappear in a storm, evade into shallows, etc... Rinse and repeat.

It involves nothing more than speed and daring which bloodied veterans have in abundance.

Do not for a moment play the card of the "poor us that get ganked by the defense forces". It is not entirely true and every one of us knows it, be it powergamers, metagamers or roleplay raiders.

Bang for the buck, it is faster and way safer to simply ravage a reinforcement zone by invading OW battles.