No Orcs, Elves, Dwarfes, or Trolls

[Old Crusty]

   I could be wrong but aren’t there a bunch of MMO games that are Clan based and in alternate Fantasy or Science Fiction worlds? Lots of MMO games where you and your buddies can try to carve out a small part of the world for yourself and keep a stronghold? Plenty of games out there that have nothing to do with reality that you can go and make your own really?

   Naval Action is not and never should be made to be, World of Warcraft, Everquest, Eve, Star Wars, Star Trek, or any other Fantasy made up world or Universe.

   This game has great potential in a fairly realistic world struggle between actual Nations that exist now or existed in the past and failed. Compare Clans to the smaller City States, and smaller Kingdoms from our history. The only ones to have survived are subjugated to larger Nations. 

The power houses of today, Great Britain, Russia, France, Spain, United States, Germany, and many more that I will not take time to list were all carved out in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries. They failed and succeeded because of National unity and leadership or the lack there off. The biggest and most prominent reason for this was DIPLOMACY!!!! When Diplomacy failed then there was war. Two sides, sometimes three or more struggled for there own Nations best interest. In a lot of cases wars were a stalemate and Diplomacy decided the outcome. In other cases One Nation took what it wanted from another. But can anybody tell me how the different Italian States faired trying to stay independent like your Clans? 

   Instead of everybody just wanting to make this another version of other MMO games, let’s stop  fighting against having a National Diplomatic stance with other Nations and start figuring out how we can make it work the best for the game and the people that play it. There are some very good suggestions all over the forums here if we can just bring them together, Diplomacy can and will work. It will ad a deep meaning to the game that can enrich your game experience and NOT ruin it.

   This game has the opportunity to be the first of its kind in an MMO computer world.

[Guest]

You already have the cartoon nations, the magical safezones, the insta-bake Le Requien and Hercs.. How is this not a fantasy genre?

[Old Crusty]

2 minutes ago, Lars Kjaer said:

You already have the cartoon nations, the magical safezones, the insta-bake Le Requien and Hercs.. How is this not a fantasy genre?

It still must sell as a game

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

Our triggerhappy kids are just afraid to lose trigger moments, to be delivered fast and uncomplicated, and not wise enough to understand the thrills of diplomatic relations and their sister, strategy. That is why they will always protest against attempts to make this game bigger and enriched with a focus not only on shooting stuff and making marks.

While, I am sure, there will not be a lack of opportunity for living out aggressions after a decent diplomacy system will be directing them into proper directions being urgent.

[Hethwill]

If you going big, then make it epic. Do not nitpick. Go full logistics for all that strategy and diplomacy to make sense.

 

 

[Angus MacDuff]

You know, the pair of you (Cetric & Crusty) seem to look down your political noses at the rest of us who do not want to be controlled by you.  You're proposing a system that ties the hands of anyone who doesn't win a vote.  There is plenty of diplomacy in this game on a daily basis already and nobody is forced to follow a majority vote.  Major clans make diplomatic decisions all the time and minor clans and singletons are free to join in or not.  The system is perfectly fine and there are far better issues for the Devs to focus on.  I have checked in on nation chat several times to ask if I can attack specific nations and in every case, i'm told, "OW is not RVR".

[Tiedemann]

8 minutes ago, Oberon74 said:

You know, the pair of you (Cetric & Crusty) seem to look down your political noses at the rest of us who do not want to be controlled by you.  You're proposing a system that ties the hands of anyone who doesn't win a vote.  There is plenty of diplomacy in this game on a daily basis already and nobody is forced to follow a majority vote.  Major clans make diplomatic decisions all the time and minor clans and singletons are free to join in or not.  The system is perfectly fine and there are far better issues for the Devs to focus on.  I have checked in on nation chat several times to ask if I can attack specific nations and in every case, i'm told, "OW is not RVR".

Imo if a diplomacy system is limited so nations can only have 1 ally it should work. Then all game controlled alliances wil be 2 and 2 nations. The the casual/random players who have to shot at everything they come across should be able to survive not being able to attack players from 1 out of 10 nations.. 

[Rabman]

1 minute ago, Tiedemann said:

Imo if a diplomacy system is limited so nations can only have 1 ally it should work. Then all game controlled alliances wil be 2 and 2 nations. The the casual/random players who have to shot at everything they come across should be able to survive not being able to attack players from 1 out of 10 nations.. 

We have no Game Mechanic enforced Alliances now, but many unofficial arrangements, you'd be foolish to believe those same deals would not apply, even though there is only one official ally. 

I think this whole exercise is a waste of time imo, as I think the devs know better than to sink their time into this project of resurrecting Alliances, knowing the player base will game the system to work out an amicable situation for whatever they desire, whether by puppet states, alts, making a super block by having two Alliances Ally, etc.

[Fenris]

16 minutes ago, Rabman said:

you'd be foolish to believe those same deals would not apply, even though there is only one official ally.  

They wouldn`t make sense, with another kinds of agreements.

 

16 minutes ago, Rabman said:

I think this whole exercise is a waste of time imo, as I think the devs know better than to sink their time into this project of resurrecting Alliances, knowing the player base will game the system to work out an amicable situation for whatever they desire, whether by puppet states, alts, making a super block by having two Alliances Ally, etc

Completely wrong. If the rules are set properly, you can not screw around with alts, or create any blocks on purpose or not. If not , then you can, and that is exactly happening all the time, because the rules in game aren`t correctly defined and coded.

[Hethwill]

Correct Fenris. Proper game rule design then. Let's write a rulebook and then give it to the coders. All good games start with pencil and paper.

That way we can notice the loopholes without having the coders to jump around trying to fix the loopholes we didn't predict when we all suggested the stuff in the past.

That would be extremely helpful and we would be participating actively in a rule system design.

[Christendom]

most of those fantasy MMOs that you reference have more than 600 people on a time.  Runescape which is more than a decade old has more active members than we do.  Years ago I played an MMO called Star Wars Galaxies, it has since closed down.  There is a emulated version of it that plays the original classic mode called SWGEMU that gets 2000+ on a day and it's fan run.  My point being, those systems worked.  This one does not.  A 15 year old game that is run by fans on a server somewhere has more active players than we do.  With over 120k copies of this game sold and 2 years later we only have 500-600 on stable at a time means that this game just does somethings or many things wrong.  Chief among them is this 11 nation bullshit.  500 players split into 11 nations (or factions) is just far too much.  We're spread too thin.  With the inclusion of clan owned ports and smaller BR port battles the devs already transitioned this game into a clan based one.  They need to take it 1 step further and make it fully clan based with nations as simply a backdrop or a race.  

If you want to be a Pirate or a Brit national that sails around the Caribbean and scratch that history itch you should be able to do so.  If you want to go do RVR and take ports you should be able to do that also.  Conquest or RVR at a high level simply does not work with the current nation model.  Most of these games you reference have different levels of content.  PVE / Casual and Hardcore.  Think of nations as casual and the clan/war company RVR has hardcore.  There needs to be room for both.

Ditch the 11 nations, make only 5 or 6.  Have them be most PVE casual player catch-alls.  Create a new "RVR" faction the players can join and create clans that fight each other for the 200 or so ports out there.  Player X is a brit player who gets a letter of marque to join the "RVR" faction and creates a company/clan that fights.  Seems simple IMO.

Edited August 20, 2018 by Christendom

[Rabman]

9 minutes ago, Fenris said:

Completely wrong. If the rules are set properly, you can not screw around with alts, or create any blocks on purpose or not. If not , then you can, and that is exactly happening all the time, because the rules in game aren`t correctly defined and coded.

I can't see how my opinion of the situation is completely wrong, but I'll bite. I do not think it is worth the dev's time to try to build a better mouse trap, over and over again.  I can't even begin to imagine how you would create rules to prevent two hostile clans/nations from NOT attacking each other, to make a back door alliance deal. Some sort of forced attacking mechanic? Sure sounds fun on the onset.

Wouldn't we get better mileage in other areas that would benefit overall game-play, than trying to re-engineer an alliance system for the sake of diplomacy and realism? In my humble opinion Diplomacy will not bring players to the game and keep players in the game.

[p i t]

1 hour ago, Old Crusty said:

When Diplomacy failed then there was war

Sir! Great Britain's diplomacy IS WAR, good day!

 

 

ps. there are plenty of trolls in NA.

Edited August 20, 2018 by pit

[Rabman]

3 minutes ago, pit said:

Sir! Great Britain's diplomacy IS WAR, good day!

Pit you are sounding more and more official as of late. Have you taken charge of GB to lead the Empire back to greatness?

[Sir Lancelot Holland]

 

10 minutes ago, pit said:

Sir! Great Britain's diplomacy IS WAR, good day!

 

 

ps. there are plenty of trolls in NA.

o7 Permission to send a gunboat Sir?

[p i t]

8 minutes ago, Rabman said:

Pit you are sounding more and more official as of late. Have you taken charge of GB to lead the Empire back to greatness?

I may have some influence in the Royal court

2 minutes ago, Sir Lancelot Holland said:

o7 Permission to send a gunboat Sir?

 Unleash hell!  o7

[vazco]

1 hour ago, Old Crusty said:

This game has great potential in a fairly realistic world struggle between actual Nations

Conquering a port by sailing a few ships to it's harbour and capturing a few circles is kind of fake. The whole Haiti was captured by a nation not having a single ship. This game's main concepts are in large part fake - everyone owns a fleet which would suffice for a small nation. I'm sorry for breaking the immersion

[Cecil Selous]

31 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Chief among them is this 11 nation bullshit.  500 players split into 11 nations (or factions) is just far too much.  We're spread too thin.  With the inclusion of clan owned ports and smaller BR port battles the devs already transitioned this game into a clan based one.  They need to take it 1 step further and make it fully clan based with nations as simply a backdrop or a race.  

If you want to be a Pirate or a Brit national that sails around the Caribbean and scratch that history itch you should be able to do so.  If you want to go do RVR and take ports you should be able to do that also.  Conquest or RVR at a high level simply does not work with the current nation model.  Most of these games you reference have different levels of content.  PVE / Casual and Hardcore.  Think of nations as casual and the clan/war company RVR has hardcore.  There needs to be room for both.

Ditch the 11 nations, make only 5 or 6.  Have them be most PVE casual player catch-alls.  Create a new "RVR" faction the players can join and create clans that fight each other for the 200 or so ports out there.  Player X is a brit player who gets a letter of marque to join the "RVR" faction and creates a company/clan that fights.  Seems simple IMO.

I can see your reasoning behind that but for me personally it would make the game less attractive. Our ingame universe is based in a historic setting. Getting rid off nations or just make them a mere cosmetic and go full blown clan based would possibly drive me away (probably not )because it kills authenticity. For me at least. Ditching a few minor nations can work and I don't see it as a critical action. But otherwise you could argue that you can attack even less people after that because some of them are now in your nation (still assuming the game is not fully clan based, otherwise your nationality doesn't matter anyway like you said). 

When I bought this game I wanted to sail British ships against the France and Spain and not hoodledoodle vs Hillbillys4il0rs!!!111. That was for me the main point. Sailing and fighting with those ships in a historical setting. I am over that now because I sail for a fantasy navy (If this nation will get cut I won't complain and could understand it) but I still strongly oppose the idea of making this game purely clan based. Sure you not able to attack everyone who is not your clan because they are in the same nation. And you might be against some decisions of other clans in your nation. But better think about some rock solid mechanics that can make inner nation wars work or a good feature or simply accept it.

EDIT: Also this game could have a lot of it's features and core mechanics deeper, interesting and more complex without making them more difficult too. See vazco's PB example above. Unfortunately such a small dev team can't give us all we want respectively can't realize every good and approved idea in no time. 

Edited August 20, 2018 by Cecil Selous

[Christendom]

10 minutes ago, Cecil Selous said:

I can see your reasoning behind that but for me personally it would make the game less attractive. Our ingame universe is based in a historic setting. Getting rid off nations or just make them a mere cosmetic and go full blown clan based would possibly drive me away because it kills authenticity. For me at least. Ditching a few minor nations can work and I don't see it as a critical action. But otherwise you could argue that you can attack even less people after that because some of them are now in your nation (still assuming the game is not fully clan based, otherwise your nationality doesn't matter anyway like you said).

When I bought this game I wanted to sail British ships against the France and Spain and not hoodledoodle vs Hillbillys4il0rs!!!111. That was for me the main point. Sailing and fighting with those ships in a historical setting. I am over that now because I sail for a fantasy navy (If this nation will get cut I won't complain and could understand it) but I still strongly oppose the idea of making this game purely clan based. Sure you not able to attack everyone who is not your clan because they are in the same nation. And you might be against some decisions of other clans in your nation. But better think about some rock solid mechanics that can make inner nation wars work or a good feature or simply accept it.

Historic setting....    Russian / D-K / Sweden / Prussia / Poland with a heavy presence in the Caribbean.......unlimited repairs ........ magical mods.......Pirates sailing 1st rates.........Determined defender...

Does not compute.  

We can have a game that is super historically accurate that no one will play or a game with historic elements and game play mechanics that make sense and work.  We've tried to have both and it doesn't work.  I'd rather have a game that works.  Maybe I'm wrong.

Edited August 20, 2018 by Christendom

[Fenris]

36 minutes ago, Rabman said:

I can't see how my opinion of the situation is completely wrong, but I'll bite. I do not think it is worth the dev's time to try to build a better mouse trap, over and over again.  I can't even begin to imagine how you would create rules to prevent two hostile clans/nations from NOT attacking each other, to make a back door alliance deal. Some sort of forced attacking mechanic? Sure sounds fun on the onset.

Wouldn't we get better mileage in other areas that would benefit overall game-play, than trying to re-engineer an alliance system for the sake of diplomacy and realism? In my humble opinion Diplomacy will not bring players to the game and keep players in the game.

Because this is how it worked in that time.You declare a war, set a goal, agree on peace terms. So why would a nation declare a war on another nation without wanting something? it is not only about declaring a war, another agreements are possible too, trade agreements, "neutral", and so on. In a game which has no content, low player numbers is the only absolute term.Once again, if  a player can do something in a game, which is not meant to be, it is called exploit, bug or similar.

If you want only pew pew with a bit crafting and trade, which is losing all meaning with DLCs and simplified crafting, you will never have high numbers in game. Why? Because it is boring.

Btw, developers build all the time their own traps, without listening to their "testers". We observe those and complain about them now for 2 years......

Edited August 20, 2018 by Fenris

[Cecil Selous]

6 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Historic setting....    Russian / D-K / Sweden / Prussia / Poland with a heavy presence in the Caribbean.......unlimited repairs ........ magical mods.......Pirates sailing 1st rates.........Determined defender...

Does not compute.  
 

We can have a game that is super historically accurate that no one will play or a game with historic elements and game play mechanics that make sense and work.  We've tried to have both and it doesn't work.  I'd rather have a game that works.  Maybe I'm wrong.

I wrote that I wouldn't be against getting rid of these nations. Just because some mechanics are more or less magic doesn't mean that some aspects can't still be historic. I am more for the term authentic. I just stated my opinion and imho you are wrong yes. If the majority sees it like you and the devs come to a point where they agree with that, so be it. I simply don't see a not fully clan based game as the main reason that it doesn't work. But, I could be wrong too

Edited August 20, 2018 by Cecil Selous

[vazco]

49 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

Interesting statement, what is "whole Haiti" and which nation you refer to?

Haiti

[Old Crusty]

2 hours ago, Oberon74 said:

You know, the pair of you (Cetric & Crusty) seem to look down your political noses at the rest of us who do not want to be controlled by you.  You're proposing a system that ties the hands of anyone who doesn't win a vote.  There is plenty of diplomacy in this game on a daily basis already and nobody is forced to follow a majority vote.  Major clans make diplomatic decisions all the time and minor clans and singletons are free to join in or not.  The system is perfectly fine and there are far better issues for the Devs to focus on.  I have checked in on nation chat several times to ask if I can attack specific nations and in every case, i'm told, "OW is not RVR".

If the system was perfectly fine we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The problem here is that if the vast majority of let’s say USA players wants a trade agreement with , ay Russia, that one person like you can screw that up by attacking a Russian trader going to CT. YOU WOULD BE THAT ONE PLAYER TELLING US ALL HIW WE MUST PLAY.  All we want is for that Russian traders OW tag to read, not “enemy player” but “trade partner” and there is no ability for you to tag them. Then you would just find someone else to tag. I know this actually takes thought in the game and you just can’t roam around screwing things up for others like I am sure you like. 

[James Cornelius]

3 hours ago, Lars Kjaer said:

You already have the cartoon nations, the magical safezones, the insta-bake Le Requien and Hercs.. How is this not a fantasy genre?

Truer words were never spoken.

The game should have launched "as is" in mid 2017. That was the peak of realism vs enjoyment. It's been all down hill since, with an occasional QOL improvement or nudge to sailing mechanics.

[Christendom]

Just now, Banished Privateer said:

Still not quite sure what you mean.

I think he is implying that Prussia, which I don't think had much of a navy, now owns most of N Haiti.  Aka Historical accuracy has been thrown out the window.