Development plans update: 1 half of 2019

[Roadkill]

9 minutes ago, Macjimm said:

I hope the Devs never change the game based on your suggestions.  If I were forced to fight, instead of avoiding a fight,  it  would completely ruin the game for me.

The only fun thing about the War Server is the risk of being attacked by a player, or group of players.  I would use the Peace server if I wanted to avoid the risk of getting ganked.  

When I sail a Traders ship I find fighting boring, but the chance of being ganked creates risk and excitement.  I like running away and if the option to flee is removed the game would be dull.

Your opinions of the game would seem to force a style of play on me that would leave no enjoyment.

Come and join our clan Macjim, you know our guys would love to have you.  We'd allow you to play the game the way you want it but if somebody wants to fight you then you will have a clan of players who love pvp to back you up.  The way you play is the way I started playing and I still enjoy trading as much as I enjoy PVP.  You talk a lot of sense and I hope i will one day persuade you to join a clan who will actively work to ensure you can play the game you want to.

[Macjimm]

3 minutes ago, Roadkill said:

 I still enjoy trading as much as I enjoy PVP.  

Thanks for your encouragement. 

I've noticed lots of players in game that are relaxed, enjoy trading and offer support to me as a solo trader and to our clan (SCTC).  The generous co-operative nature of most of the community is the best part of the game.   But the majority of these guys tell me they spend very little time in the Forum.

I hope that the Devs will always allow some gameplay for  traders on the War server.

[Puchu]

Noone ever said they wanted to remoove traders. I know you are trying to throw my ideas under the bus by drawing false conclusions. You can run around doing nothing at see for as long as you want imo. 

Noone ever said they wanted to force you to fight. Again sama thing. You half read my comments, draw wrong conclusions and then you try to devilise me by saying "Look at him, he wants to force me to do what he wants"

Thats a very cheap type of arguement and you should know better.

 

What i am saying is:

1. There need to be better systems for the people who want fair pvp. With relatively even matchups. Because right now YOU and your kind are forcing ME to play the game how YOU want it. You are doing to me exactly what you think i would be doing to you. I puzzles me how you cannot see that. You are forcing me to spend 8 hours on the ow to find some half decently matched fight.

2. Im not saying i want to force people to fight. All i am saying is: A person who runs away should allways come out worse than someone who turns and fights. No matter the odds. If i get ganked by 3 bigger ships, i should turn around and fight them because it should be more beneficial for me to do that, than to waste everybodys time by running away. If you were in your trader and got attacked, and you knew that by fighting your attacker you would gain more out of the situation then by running away, wouldnt you fight? Wouldnt you at least try? If you knew that if you did only a little damage vs the attacker it would be worth more than your traderun, wouldnt you try to squeeze the most out of the combat? And .... i think you would actually be happy to get attacked. You would have a fight, you could try and see how well you could fend off the attacker, and if you loose, which would happen anyways, you would still be happy. Yes it would kill the "Excitement" of running away in fear of a 5 player ganksquad and it would kill the thrill of sitting in port for hours and it would destroy the fun of sailing far out into the open sea  for hours to avoid hunters while staring into the deep blue ocean where nothing ever happens. In my theory, you could still run away. But it would be the worse option. Turning and fighting and squeezing out every last bit of damage that you can possibly get would be waaay more beneficial for you.

 

If i was a ganksquad and i knew the enemy would gain more gold, exp, mods, medals, dubloons, whatever for every ship that is shooting at him. I would be a fool to have him fight all ships at once. I would fight him one by one, so he doesnt get those big rewards, which would create way more even fights. 

If i knew that being ganked would give big rewards to me, i would not mind being ganked. I would run into enemy territory and create fights for them and for me all day long. I would be the one creating game content for everybody.  Right now when you sail around, you go to places and you get ganked all you are doing is spending your real life time to create game content for others. You are basically exploiting your own life to create content and happyness for others. If i would gain more out of a gank than is lost by loosing the ship, then would be happy to create tons of content for everybody, because it benefits everybody.

 

Trust me, if those ideas were implemented you would have way more fun in this game than you can possibly imagine. There would be way more players way more people to fight and hunt and run away from. And way more ways to play the game than just the current one that you personally seem to like and i despise. 

And really, you know i dont want to destroy your boring sailing around. You should still be able to do it. Im just saying: I dont want to be forced into your playstyle. See how your arguement comes round and bites you in the ass?

 

[Angus MacDuff]

15 hours ago, Puchu said:

- If there have to be ganks for whatever reason that i will never understand, at least make it so, that the one who is being ganked will actually fight the gankers and not run away for 30 minutes till he eventually gets caught by sloooooow and steady chaser fire.

Running away isnt fun for anybody. Not for the one who is running and not for the one who is chasing. It is just boring.

Again, you are speaking for yourself and not the whole community.  Understandable.  Many of us enjoy the immersion of 18th/19th century naval warfare.  What we call ganking was considered good tactics and concentration of resources.  Running away from a more powerful enemy was quite common and there is a real sense of accomplishment if you can dodge through the wolves and reach port safely.  Only in 'death ground" are you required to fight.

[van Veen]

• Ability to send player ships/fleet across open world to a target port

• Reputation system 

• More paints
• Peace/alliance/neutral/hostile/war status between nations. Status changed by admin based on server dynamics. 
• Raids to enable plundering/destroying ports and resources stored in the warehouses

 

[Puchu]

Of course i am speaking for myself. It's the only one i truely know.

Whom are you speaking for? Are you the voice of the community? Do you have statistical data on all the players who play, have played or might consider playing this game? Do you know what everybody whishes? I guess not. So dont pretend that you are the voice of a community that you literally know nothing about. 

So lets roll out the old realism arguement again...

1. This is a game. Do you want to deny that?
2. In that century naval warfare you would have probably been a) A Peasant who never saw the seas b) A sailor working his ass off shrubbing the decks and hoping he would never get into a fight. Both having a life expectance of 25 -30 Years. Do you want to be cleaning decks in your freetime after you come from a days work at the office? 
3. In that century, wars, fights and lives were real. You die on a ship, you are dead. Your character hitbox on the ship gets hit by a random Splinter, the screen goes black for you and you see the words "You died!" Then you can happily and totally immersed start from 0.
4. The real HMS Victory had a total of 8 fights during her about 80 Years of service. Do you hear me... 8 figths in 80 years... Do you think that would be a good game where you spend 80 years getting 8 fights?
5. Good strategies in real life do not make good games. In real life, running away from an opponent is the better option in 9/10 times. If you go into a real fight, you are likely to end up injured or killed, no matter the enemy. There are people in real life who really fight.for fun, but guess what... they  fight according to exact rules which make sure that the fights are 100% even and only the participants' fighting skills and preparation make the difference. There are no unfair fights for fun in the real world.
6. There are so many things wrong with the combat model in terms of "making the then used strategies good" that i cant even begin to tell you how many things would need to be changed in order to make that historically accurate. 
 

The whole "realism" arguement ... I dont know where to start... it kills the whole point of it being a game. If you are making a game, you need to make it FUN. Having it be just like it was in real life is NOT FUN. If you wanted it to be like in real life, then you dont have to play a game. You can go to a shipping company right now and become a sailor. Nothing is stopping you from it. You can be totally immpersed cleaning the decks and you can be happy that you never find a fight and die at an old age.

Realism does not make good games. Good mechanics make good games. Focus on the fun and add as much realism as you can squeeze in while still keeping the fun the main priority. Because games are meant to be fun. 

[Puchu]

7 minutes ago, rediii said:

 If you look for a arenagame you are playing the wrong game.

The game once was an arenagame. Remember?

[balticsailor]

Naval Action legends failed, because it was setup to fail. Grinding Bots to unlock usable guns is no fun at all. Doing it again and again for every new ship, yeah big wonder not many player stick around for it.

[AeRoTR]

50 minutes ago, rediii said:

Naval Action legends failed. There are many way better arenagames on the market and I don't see a single reason why the development of recent years should be scrapped to make some single guys happy.

You are fighting a losing battle here, I don't even know why you put that much effort into it.

There is no way NA Legends would fail when World of Tanks and World of Warships have such a big success.

It was just a wrong implementation or an experiment. I can not imagine ranking systems, duels, fleet battles reachable within a loading screen, that is what we work for hours, weeks just get a taste. Legends would take over Naval Action, may be that is why it has been put into shelve.

 

[Barbarosa]

NA Legends has no chance of success. The mechanics are not suitable for MOBA. Wind is the biggest problem. Second, ships can not have too much diversity and balance at the same time.

Imagine yourself fighting same battle again and again approaching the enemy from beam. How many matches you can bare to do? It is boring and repetitive.

NA magic lies in random encounters.

Edited June 25, 2019 by Barbarosa

[Hethwill]

6 minutes ago, Barbarosa said:

NA magic lies in random encounters.

Same with any simulation game. No sortie in IL2 is the same, ever. Same thing in NA (personally don't see it as a mmo, but as a persistent arena).

[Snoopy]

Unlocking the dueling rooms again would be good. It is at least something until (if it makes it at all) NA-L is here. The code should still be in the game?

Could call them "Training rooms" if the duelist's agenda is too off-putting 😛 though having duels is something that fits the zeitgeist of the era the game is in.

[Puchu]

4 hours ago, rediii said:

And the reason why the open world arrived was a voting if I know that right.

You know that wrong.

Open world arrived because the devs decided that NA was going to be an OW game. There was no voting at all. It was just the Idea of a single Person who just wanted it to be like that. Also, people back then thought and there is a youtube video of sidestrafe on it: "If this is the quality of combat that the devs were able to come up with, then surely the OW would be amazing." Turns out... the combat was the best thing they ever made and in comparison to the quality of the battle instances, the open world is pure garbage. Now ppl spend most time on the worst part of the game.

 

There is no reason why there shouldnt be an arena mode implemented into the game. The people would not be missed on the open world, because they wouldnt play it anyways. It doesnt have to be the main part of the game. It doesnt even have to have anything to do with the open world. It could just be a testing room. Pick whatever ship and guns and such you like, or pick it in the ow, then go with that into a battle where you get no wins, no losses, nothing.. i dont care what you get. I would prefere if you got something out of it, leaderboards and such but i dont really care. It could just be a risk free, reward free, waiting time free, nation free fighting, testing, whatever zone. The code is there. You can call it honor battles or testroom or whatever. 

Other than "we just dont want it for no reason, end of discussion" I cannot find any reason why there cannot be a small arena built into the game. 

 

3 hours ago, Barbarosa said:

NA Legends has no chance of success. The mechanics are not suitable for MOBA. Wind is the biggest problem. Second, ships can not have too much diversity and balance at the same time.

 Imagine yourself fighting same battle again and again approaching the enemy from beam. How many matches you can bare to do? It is boring and repetitive.

 NA magic lies in random encounters.

Noone said NA has to be moba like. I think you probably dont even know what moba games actually are and are just using the term wrong, so i wont go deeper into that.

Wind and positioning can either be handled like in seatrials to make it all even or the location can be put on a radom coastline spot of the map. Wind can be set within a reasonable advantage or disadvantage for one side to make the fights different. The fact that the ships are never fully equal is true. And they dont have to be. Just make the matchmaking semi decent and give the weaker side the wind. It will lead to many many different encounters. In seatrials we had surprises and santissimas in the same battle. I fought Vics with my trinc 1vs1. All those random encounters you praise so highly could be there. In fact, they would be even more random than in the ow. 

The NA magic lies in the Battle instances when real fights happen. And real fights only happen if both sides think they can win. Otherwise its boring for every participant.

 

Naval Action Legends was Icecream with dogshit spilled all over it. And as was mentioned before... It was set up and meant to fail so the devs can argue with numbers they manipulated themselves. I am also sure that NAL if properly implemented would stomp NA into the ground playerwise and probably moneywise aswell. 

[Reginulfr]

2 hours ago, Snoopy said:

Unlocking the dueling rooms again would be good. It is at least something until (if it makes it at all) NA-L is here. The code should still be in the game?

You could limit it so you can only Duel someone in your own nation, like other MMOs.  Its a natural limitation because you run out of people to fight, and you get no gain to it.  So natually people would move to OW pvp to get real content.  But at the same time you can practice and test builds, which ultimately is good because when you do pvp, the fights will be better.

People will also get more confident and therefore would be more likely to go forth and pvp.  

Simply put, of there is no loss and no rewards, and you can only duel same nation, you get the benefits of learning from a duel, but at the same time you dont detract from PVP cause you still have to find the enemy if you want rewards/a real fight

[qw569😳]

Duel rooms are the most easy way to organize competition in Naval Action.

Competition will increase activity on twitch and other streaming platforms. And it's a free advertise.

Remember tournament when OCEAN took the first place.  

[Gott365]

could we also talk about the things you are accomplishing, but not notifying us about atm? last two patches didn´t have a note...

also: I don´t know if this is the right place, but I couldn´t find it elsewhere: Why exactly has broadside-firing been introduced into boarding? I mean, either you put your full crew into boarding, as it is shown atm, or you send some off loading the cannons. but why do these sent off still count towards your boarding crew? that neither feels balanced nor realistic imo.

[AeRoTR]

Duel & Practice rooms has to return, also instance to test ships with dummy ai or no ai. 

[Vinnie]

1 hour ago, AeRoTR said:

Duel & Practice rooms has to return, also instance to test ships with dummy ai or no ai. 

Would be a great training tool for helping new members of the clan get up to speed with pvp.

[Barbancourt]

10 hours ago, rediii said:

The magic in NA lies in its assymetric battles and the victories you gain while in a worse position aswell in the grand campaign in terms of RvR.

Somehow 5 minute curbstompings just aren't "magical" to me. I want glorious clashing fleets!

Edited June 25, 2019 by Barbancourt

[Puchu]

you will not have glorious clashing fleets... If one side has 1 ship less, there will not be a fight there will only be waiting in port and guessing how many enemies are there.

[Raf Van Boom]

These duel rooms made a comeback about 6 months ago, they were empty except for the first few days when it was brand new and shiny. People don't want this stuff, as simple as that.

[admin]

11 hours ago, rediii said:

Naval Action legends failed. There are many way better arenagames on the market and I don't see a single reason why the development of recent years should be scrapped to make some single guys happy.

You are fighting a losing battle here, I don't even know why you put that much effort into it.

 

11 hours ago, balticsailor said:

Naval Action legends failed, because it was setup to fail. Grinding Bots to unlock usable guns is no fun at all. Doing it again and again for every new ship, yeah big wonder not many player stick around for it.

Cannons have nothing to do with it. Unlockable guns exist in all arenas and progression is required for free to play arenas to survive.
But maybe you did forget.. 

NA Arena died twice

• First Sea Trials - Infamous Sidestrafe was very excited for the OW plans while playing in the sea trials. But Sea trials died . In one of the last battles in March (peak was January) he literally had to fight bots live on twitch cos he could not find players - 0 other players online - only sidestrafe.. He could not find a single player 4 months after start of the arena testing. 10000 players joined - 1 (sidestrafe) was left in 4 months. Perfect chicken dinner winner.
  • Thanks to community gods we already had a working OW prototype by then and moved everyone to the caribbean (online jumped and never went down below 100! even with low sales with no crafting and no trading. It was just OW npc hunting and pvp and despite that it has way better player numbers compared to arena)
• NA Legends: Same exact thing and timing happened with Legends. Some say it was guns, some say it was bots. But no. They are all mistaken. It was the arena itself.
  • Arenas/MOBAs only survive if they get to top 1 or top 2 spot. Otherwise they die. If you have no players any arena dies. All mobas that did not get to pole position died. Unlike niche games it is a winner takes all concept.

Just think about these numbers

• NA - legends was given for FREE to 120,000 people and only 11000 logged in and online was 0 in 3 months. (reminder about cannons - sea trials had no progression with the exception of ship unlocks and it died in 4 months). Nobody wanted it - except for people who want fair combat. But those left too because they did not want fair combat against bots. 
• In comparison
• NA OW never went below 250-300 people during the worst patches with very low monthly sales

We closed the arena topic for ourselves. There is no retention there. Proven twice. with pure product and with product with several progression lines (cannons/officers etc)

Asymmetric hunting is what makes OW exciting and it works. Just check small group pvp streams (they exist).
Players who want fair 1v1 pvp should be seen more often in the solo patrol area. 

 

Regarding duel rooms and testing rooms.

We had them (duels, small battles, large battles, tournament room) as a appendix leftover from sea trials. But later we realised. 
Duel rooms remove players from the OW, making overall experience for the community worse. They kept part of the audience in the past. 

Our game is OW. Players must be risking something in OW. There is no other game. Not because we are stubborn - but because we tested the OTHER game. It does not hold average players - and as a result hardcore fans of other game have to fight bots and also leave.. 

Solo and Clan based tournaments might come back in form of official quarterly event. But again. We would prefer to do them in OW - old school style like wow classic will do raids when they launch. 
 

PS
Small print
Main reason for their removal - they steal take instance capacity from Open world (duel instances cannot be joined by other players in form of reinforcements, revenge gankers or helpers) = which means they cost more money than OW instances because i have to keep a separate server pool for them and they can be used only when people want to duel (staying idle all other time). We are all adults and know it can be solved. Duel room can be a subscription feature. This will be a real litmus test on how many people REALLY want a duel room.

[admin]

51 minutes ago, Le Raf Boom said:

These duel rooms made a comeback about 6 months ago, they were empty except for the first few days when it was brand new and shiny. People don't want this stuff, as simple as that.

Players do what's they want - they want to experience a fantasy - winning in the age of sail. 
Evade if you are weak, Amass power to get strong.. and crush your enemies by force AND numbers AND sometimes time..

There should be no doubts left for everyone here. This is what players LOVE to do. Duel room is also part of this fantasy due to solo small ship actions. But duels in real life happened a lot AND they happen in NA a lot. And that's why duels will only happen in OW. 

We understand of course that some who want duels do not want to hunt (time wasting) and do not want to take risks (ship loss). But this is a game for those who love risk in the OW and love hunting like the real frigate captains did.
 

[Puchu]

Hey Admin, happy to hear from you. 

I see, that you have closed the arena book forever. I would disagree with your conclusions, but im sure you would disagree with me anyways, so this discussion would be fruitless and we shall not have it.

Now that you are there, could you please tell us why we cant have a dueling room where we can fight each other no matter the flag with our ship that we have equipped  without loot and without loss? A place to train people, fight ourselves and test everything?

Edit: I personally would love a dueling room that has just the same rules as ow combat. Maybe you can have 2 options 1 with loot enx and all and loss and one without loot and exp and without loss.

And why can we not have a 1vs1 waiting list which we can activate while we are doing things on the ow and when someone wants to fight he just clicks the button and gets matched with the most even ship in the queue? The Player could be teleported out of the ow into the duel room and afterwards back onto the ow. Maybe instead of the 1vs1 zone?

 

 

Edited June 25, 2019 by Puchu

[Puchu]

7 minutes ago, admin said:

We understand of course that some who want duels do not want to hunt (time wasting) and do not want to take risks (ship loss). But this is a game for those who love risk in the OW and love hunting like the real frigate captains did.
  

And everyone who thinks differently should just leave and play other games. I understand.