Naval Action will never suceed if that will continue

[HachiRoku]

4 minutes ago, Christendom said:

WoW has 10+ mil subscribers 14 years after it was released.  90% of wow players don’t experience the higher forms of end game raid content.  75% of them don’t PVP.  What keeps them occupied is character progression, achievements and collecting various types of loot.  That’s a lot of players killing bots. 

Naval Action falls short in regards to player progression.  We have no achievements other than screenshots.  Limited amounts of “loot” to collect.  Pretty much zero cosmetic ship customization.  All you can do is basically sail out and kill the same 400 players or the same tired old AI.  This is boring.  Killing AI in any game is mundane and not really challenging.  What other games manage to do that NA has yet to figure out is how to make it rewarding.  People will do almost any grind as long as that carrot at the end is juicy enough.  

While I don’t have all the answers, successful MMOs figure out how to keep casual players engaged with a healthy mix of customization, rewards and progression .  Make the game full of players again and PVP / RVR will work themselves out.

 

Yes but youre besides the point. How many of those 14 million are the same from the start? Those are different player cycles. Wow is also a rare example of a game that survives that long. Naval action is not eve or wow so don't expect it to be. There is not a lot you can do with the game unless you give the player a character that can interact with NPC for quests etc. Even then it's always going to be: "go there sink that or go there and deliver that". 

Here is an idea. You propose something that would be a completely new kind of gameplay for naval action. Keep in mind it cannot be sinking ai or trading materials because we have that since 2016.

[Christendom]

4 minutes ago, HachiRoku said:

Yes but youre besides the point. How many of those 14 million are the same from the start? Those are different player cycles.

I played from friends and family alpha of vanilla WoW up until the start of legion (2017 expansion).  You'd be surprised how many old players are still around.  Almost all of them are casual though.  Most of them stopped playing due to life and growing up, starting families and shit rather than the game getting stale.  There is some truth to what you say though. 

I'm not expecting NA to be WoW or EVE, but you brought it up.  I'm simply saying that the notion that players don't like killing AI is wrong.  Players are fine farming AI over and over if the juice is worth the squeeze.  The cornerstone to most MMO games is still AI/NPC content, there is no reason why NA should be different.

10 minutes ago, HachiRoku said:

Here is an idea. You propose something that would be a completely new kind of gameplay for naval action. Keep in mind it cannot be sinking ai or trading materials because we have that since 2016.

Hard to create content in a period naval game that does not involve sinking or transporting......but here's a couple that have probably been suggested over the years.

Exploration Missions - Sail to patch of ocean x and return to island y.  Collect something along the way or maybe take some soundings of a coast line for a hydrography mission issued by the Royal Society.

Escort Missions - Players queue up in some sort of system/lobby where they can request escorts to a certain destination.  Maybe call it a convoy mission or something.

Timed runs/races - Create events or achievements based off how quickly a player can reach a certain destination.  Fastest time from Shroud to La Tortue in a cutter.....etc etc.

Introduce a reputation system into the game where PVP kills against certain nations makes them outlaws (pirates) and limits their access to certain ports.  This would open up outlaw battles to all nations and there will be consequences for excessive killing of players in one's own nation.  When a person automatically hits a certain level of negative rep they automatically become a pirate and have a auto generated bounty on them that other players can accept and hunt them down with.  To expand a bit, lets say Player HachiRoku has 60 kills on french players in the game over a certain period of time.  This auto generates a bounty in french capitals and players can take the mission and hunt you down getting reputation, money or whatever.  
 

 

[Teutonic]

Adding on to what @Christendom said.

Creating PvE content can create PvP content by the way it is.

The example of exploration and escort missions have players sail out in the Ow, which creates more opportunities for players to engage with one another, whether that be through sinking them or joining in group activities.

Another thought is to have places randomly along the coast from day to day have extra resources (similar to a sealed bottle). This is in line with exploration but it rewards the players who go out into the "unknown" and take the risk of OW sailing. Other players who want pvp will also have opportunities to find these players and sink them or take their cargo.

Point being, creating engaging PvE content can enhance all aspects of the game and increase PvP opportunities as well.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Teutonic

[Christendom]

^^

Healthy PVE creates more fish in the sea for sharks to enjoy.  We've spent patch after patch addressing perceived "holes' in the RVR or PVP systems of the game without addressing the elephant in the room.....the lack of players. 

Lets say we get a steady population of 1500-2000 players on consistently.  PVP hunting becomes far more plentiful and far more dangerous.  I'm sure Hachi remembers what it was like sailing around la tort/mort area right after the wipe the EU server with 1000 people on for that first 2 weeks.  With that many players on the server hunting around capitals would be suicide in small numbers and it would rectify the safe zone protections issues we currently face.  

As for RVR, 1500 players would make far more ports in the game viable and profitable....making RVR worth it again.  Even ports in the gulf would start making money as players expand outward away from the higher traffic areas to PVE and trade in peace.  

In short, it's time to take care of the casual / PVE players in this game.  It's the only way to fix it.

[TheHaney]

I'd like to just take a moment and point out that, having newly come back after a year, I see the exact same arguments happening. By the same people. Which more than anything just tickles my fancy. We really are a bunch of stubborn middle-aged men.

Edited October 23, 2018 by TheHaney

[Macjimm]

On 10/22/2018 at 8:29 AM, OjK said:

While forger DLC already makes the game killing it from inside, this video if purest example of probably worst designer decision ever

Thanks for your edit to clarify, but I don't understand.

I've never heard of Multi-boxing before reading this thread.  Think I get the idea of it from the video.

Read lots about Alts in this forum.  Seems like a passionate issue with no clear enforceable solution.

I'm guessing that you are not connecting Alts/Multi-boxing to the Forger DLC, but just guessing. 

So why is the DLC so bad?  

[HachiRoku]

9 minutes ago, Macjimm said:

So why is the DLC so bad?  

I agree with him because imo it's to cheap as a one time payment. It's so easy to swap to easy side now. Might as well have alliances. 

10 euro for 1 swap would make people reconsider. Even then its probably still to cheap but anymore would be a disaster for consumers.

[Preechur Blackheart]

Some ideas to make keep the 'casual' player engaged in the PvE grind: I play Lord of the Rings Online (and have since it BEGAN almost 10 years ago). I have 11 toons at or near the top rank (just now raised 5 levels to 120). Each one has different skills, customized appearances, written histories, music ability, upgraded gear etc etc. All of these are rewards for the PvE grind. The are plenty of types of 'juice' available for long term NA players, if we just think about it. All of these can be earned rather than be DLC content, or both....

a) paints and flags so one can customize the appearance of the various ships

b) the ability to name one's ship ( a simple graphic across the transom - like where it says 'Bellona')

c) additional ranks - there were at least 9 levels of Admirals in that era - vice admiral of the blue, admiral of the red, admiral of the fleet etc. There were 2 levels of Commodore. There were 2 levels of captain.

d) gated missions - you have to be at a certain rank to access certain missions

I am sure there are many, many other rewards to incentivize the grind.... 

 

 

 

[TheHaney]

9 minutes ago, Preechur Blackheart said:

Some ideas to make keep the 'casual' player engaged in the PvE grind: I play Lord of the Rings Online (and have since it BEGAN almost 10 years ago). I have 11 toons at or near the top rank (just now raised 5 levels to 120). Each one has different skills, customized appearances, written histories, music ability, upgraded gear etc etc. All of these are rewards for the PvE grind. The are plenty of types of 'juice' available for long term NA players, if we just think about it. All of these can be earned rather than be DLC content, or both....

a) paints and flags so one can customize the appearance of the various ships

b) the ability to name one's ship ( a simple graphic across the transom - like where it says 'Bellona') 

c) additional ranks - there were at least 9 levels of Admirals in that era - vice admiral of the blue, admiral of the red, admiral of the fleet etc. There were 2 levels of Commodore. There were 2 levels of captain. 

d) gated missions - you have to be at a certain rank to access certain missions

I am sure there are many, many other rewards to incentivize the grind.... 

 

 

 

I agree with all of this, personally.

 

The issue, I think (and the reason I left for a while) is that the devs are not focused on that. They wanted an ultra-realistic combat and sailing system; that was their dream project. The MMO aspect, I think, put them in over their depth and from where I'm standing it's always seemed like they either didn't quite realize how difficult MMO's actually are to make, or are fully aware and just don't care because it's their personal project and as long as a few diehards are involved they're happy.

 

EDIT: That sounded mean, I think. Originally I was crushingly disappointed in the game, hence my departure, but at this point I've come to terms with the fact that this will, to me, always be an incredibly good combat simulator with a very light dusting of open world mechanics.

Edited October 23, 2018 by TheHaney

[Latron]

Having this done in NA is annoying, to be sure, and it is somewhat unfair, but you'd be wrong if you think this is only a problem in NA. In some games having multiple accounts is practically a requirement to accomplish anything. I wish things could be different for NA, but there's not much us or the devs could do about it, so if you want it fixed, perhaps you could be the one to be productive and actually make some suggestions about how to tackle this issue. If you do manage to come up with an actual good idea, then I'm sure game designers all over would be pleased because alts have been a problem for years.

[TheHaney]

3 minutes ago, Latron said:

alts have been a solution for years.

fix'd

[Tristan Wolfe]

I have seen quite a few good suggestions to the game.  More engaging PVE and from what I can tell the new mission system is a good start.  I personally think that for the current population I think the ECON needs to be reduced or fixed.  Lower crafting costs for now due to low population and raise them once you have a larger playerbase or alternatively you could let us cap 4-1st rate ships.  If you're afraid of us spamming capped ships just lower capped 4-1st rates stats compared to crafted ones.  Funny enough a lot of our issues mirror that of POTBS.

[Latron]

31 minutes ago, TheHaney said:

fix'd

No, I don't believe alts are healthy for the game. Some would say that they can't play without them and that the game heavily encourages it, but I've put thousands of hours into the game with only one account, and I get along just fine.

[Nelsons Barrel]

Every game has a certain lifetime. You can't change that fact that at some point somebody will pull the plug and the servers go down. Every game starts with a huge amount of players and soon or later players move on to different games, so the player count drops.

In this regard Naval Action faces two major problems:

First Naval Action is no roleplay game with individual chars you can skill and perk for special things, so you could repeat it. In this regard, Naval Action chose to be a game where every char can have the same skillbooks, crew counts and can sail all ships. So once achieved, there is nothing to grind for a second time to achieve a possible differend outcome. Pure player-based skill determines how good you are in pvp and overall in this game.

Second the limited amount of so called content and its straight forward connection towards online-player-numbers. There is just so much you can do when you play alone. Kill npcs (new pve-missions just let you focus more at what to kill, but the pve game is and will be the same as before) and trade. Everything else in this game is depended on other players online. You necessarely need a player pirating your traders to make it more exciting, there is no npc who will replace that player in hunting traders. Going out and do pvp... depends on players being present and willing to fight you. And not to forget, there is no RvR/PB without players around it to screen and fight them.

To bandaid the lower player numbers devs go and reduce the amount of ships in a PB by just raising the average BR of ships. This helps a bit. But they dont shrink the map nor do they force us to be closer together in one spot of the map. We already reached some playernumbers that nations can't do 2 PBs at the same time or even screen for only one PB. Remember some days with over 6 PBs each 25 vs 25 players were filled up. You won't see that happening anymore. Huge clans with over 100 active players wont be there anymore and to fix this, people started to get alts to compensate for the lack of players you could depend on.

You can of course say that is because of this and that, and this must be fixed. But this is not gonna change the fate of the whole game.

 

Naval Action started big in numbers when they released it to steam. Sadly it was an Early Access title. The devs brought to us a half baked game with many loopholes and many gamemechanics to be fixed (and some are still not fixed). And devs simply tried a lot of things that has cost a lot of devtime. Since that releaseday numbers are dropping and that is just a natural thing for every game, some take longer, some take shorter. Accept that fact, stop dreaming about a huge influx of new players because of one 'release'-state and just move on as 99% of all copy-owners already did.

 

[TheHaney]

4 minutes ago, Nelsons Barrel said:

Accept that fact, stop dreaming about a huge influx of new players because of one 'release'-state and just move on as 99% of all copy-owners already did.

 

At this point I'm mainly just curious how far they can get it prior to release. Assuming it releases. I'm playing other Early Access games that have been in limbo for 5-6 years.

[Teutonic]

Except the game is still a testing alpha game according to the devs and is planned to fully release end of this year or start of next year....or so we are led to believe.

EDIT - I digress though. I suppose I'm rather irritated that the patch hasn't come yet with this new UI and economy and missions. I'd love for it to be finished so we can go back to content creation.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Teutonic

[Nelsons Barrel]

1 minute ago, Teutonic said:

Except the game is still a testing alpha game according to the devs and is planned to fully release end of this year or start of next year....or so we are led to believe.

But what will this change from what i wrote above? The game is not subscription based, so no need for devs to put more effort in to keep players paying. They deliver what you bought as EA and thats it.

[TheHaney]

8 minutes ago, Nelsons Barrel said:

The game is not subscription based, so no need for devs to put more effort in to keep players paying. They deliver what you bought as EA and thats it.

Given what I've seen of the devs so far I'd be entirely unsurprised if in a year they simply pull the plug and vanish.

Assuming they don't do that, one would have to imagine they'd take a page from literally every other modern successful service-based game and implement regular paid DLC, from flags to paint to sails, extra crew visuals, crew voicepacks, etc. I'm not a fan of actual better SHIPS for pay, but if that's what it takes to keep the servers up, so be it.

 

EDIT: A good example I could see the game taking from is Warframe. Warframe is unapologetically pay-to-win, but it's done in such an elegant and streamlined way it really works well.

Edited October 23, 2018 by TheHaney

[Ruby Rose]

what naval action really needs is to go F2P its the only foreseeable way were going to boost our player count at the rate were going i give NA about 2 years at the very best before most of the players have quit the game due to stagnation. we started with over 5000 players and now were at just over 400 actual players on the pvp server. this game is dying, free to play set it up that way and u'll have a much larger player pool. get it that way and upon release then put a price on the game. that way u get those that loved the game to pay to keep playing it

[Koltes]

On 10/23/2018 at 5:01 AM, admin said:

It is not obvious - maybe someone can help us to decipher the video, but from what i have heard that guy switches the windows..(its not automated and synced between clients). 
Back couple of years ago on PVP2 server all pirates used to dual boxing. We didnt have enough players to fulfill PB so each one would bring 1 or even 2 extra accounts and I must say @OjK that if 1 person can beat 3 players alt-tabing between 3 accounts then these 3 players really need to look at what they are doing wrong. I really dont know the current situation, but even a year ago the general game concept made it impossible to be competitive without having multiple accounts. And those accounts were mostly money/resource gathering accounts. The only way to tackle this is to introduce in depth economy system that allows for global trading. Then you wont need many accounts. You would be able to afford and get things just using one account. Now, this might sound great, but might be a red flag to devs who are making money from sale of the accounts.
 

B - we are very sure its not actually easy. Lenin (the guy on video) did this in POTBS (pirates of the burning sea) and became in game famous for this, multiple people tried to copy him in time when the game was sub based (14 dollars per month) - but only he could do it. Maybe you can try and let us know how it worked? 
You mean dual boxing? I've got 11 NA accounts. Mostly trading in each nation (before nations were extended). 3 pirate accounts including Koltes. 3 screen setup (so you see whats going on on each account during the battle), all NA clients in window mod so you can just move mouse across instead of alt-tabing. Then its macro-management 😉

 

 

On 10/23/2018 at 4:56 AM, Christendom said:

If you want to gripe about something, gripe about the lack of content.  

Content and economy. We have had quite a few players including myself who were very interested to work together and offer our hand to devs in creating interactive economy model which would solve lots ongoing issues. 

Some of the aspects of interactive economy model:

1. player created delivery missions (so I can have same account fighting and doing  trading asking other players to deliver from A to B for a price);
2. money sink in-game insurance system to help with the collateral of the delivery goods;
3. in-battle trading to allow ransoms to be paid instead of sinking traders (money sink for traders, but not a deal breaker);
4. interconnected trade hubs - brings people together (including pirates). good things with those that you can add them or remove as you need when managing traffic;
5. professions - so each player can create or do something unique to his profession. this too brings player driven interaction. trading professions. crafting professions (even if its just a profession to give bonus for creating better masts. Thus to create best ships in the game will require either lots of money to buy perfect parts from trade hubs or have lots of contacts (read player interaction); 
6. conquest of ports should always equals to ether ownership and management or raiding and plundering. Cities needs to be built and developed. Clans needs to be able to invest time, money and resources to build their home. give purpose and player interaction.

This is what imho is lacking in the game. This is what needs to be done with the game to give people purpose to play. This is what comes before conquest or leeway mechanic (now don't get me wrong here, its great to have more immerse naval combat, but in my view it was not a deal maker).