Patch 30: General feedback

[Slim McSauce]

You cant even really get a battle in an hour, a not trash one that is, unless you go to pz or something which I mean is like a lobby game on the scale of OW. If you look at the map 100% of the time you'll find almost no info as to where the real hotspots are.

Edited March 16, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[StuntPotato]

20 hours ago, Sir Loorkon said:

I think the whole game is going in the right direction now. Economie war (rare woods) for clans and nations and people that like RvR with more micro management for clans that own towns. PvP medals that make it possible to live better from PvP again by selling them. Keeping the ship diversity high by making the best ships rare with the intelligent use of permits. I like that. 

It is considered to remove the reinforcement zones (maybe by keeping the capital zones). That is also a very good move but I would recommend to combine it with the remove of the patrol zones (patrol zones would not be necessary any more) and give players only the duel zone/area. So all mechanics that hurt OW PvP and RvR would be removed.

I am looking forward to the release.

'intelligent use of permits' is not the words I'd use to describe it.

[Captain Reverse]

11 minutes ago, victor said:

It's nice to hear that you are so organized/skilled/smart/efficient that you can succed in the game playing two hours a day, but - unfortunately - it's not a relevant point when: 

- the game is underpopulated (so it should attract and keep in game also DIFFERENT kind of players than the ones that like/can play efficiently the game as it is right now)

- it seems that a plurality of players still playing the game find the game too time demandind

Moreover, I would add that the problem of time is not just a matter of hours but also of "intensity". Let's take some examples: in Warframe, you can make a sortie that in about an hour gives you a lot of action. In WOW you can make a dungeon with a mythic key 10 that in half an hour will give you contiuous, frenetic (and also quiite difficult) action; in EVE online you can do in half a hour a LVL 4 missions (let's say angel extravaganza) that will have you constantly on fight (and with the risk of being killed by NPC if you commit mistakes in triggering the wrong group). How much action are you able to meet in a half an hour session of Naval action?

 

1) u can leave city and and attack the first comer NPC Fleet. 2 hour and u can kill maybe 3-4-5-6 NPC fleet?

2) U can go to patrol area. 2 hour and u have 70k damage=10 Combat medal. I give u 100% 

3) If u love trading, u can go trade. 2 hour - 2kk reals profit +- 

4) U need ships and craft? 2 hour and u can collect all resurse from nears city

5) Epic Events? 2 hours - this is 1-2 epic events with good chest

6) Maybe u wont RVR for VM? ok, u need 2 day, 2 hours each. DAY 1 - u come flip city. DAY 2 - u come try capture city

 

YES, THIS IS VERY EASY GAME with many content for 2x hour per day.

 

just need to turn on the fantasy

Edited March 16, 2019 by Captain Reverse

[victor]

13 minutes ago, Captain Reverse said:

just need to turn on the fantasy

Sorry mate, but you made me laugh big time.

If you have to use the fantasy to turn naval action in a very easy and intense game, it means that - in reality - it is not.

Ps: BTW I asked you how much action you will meet in half an hour of NA play, not in two hours. Anyway no prob, tot capita tot sententiae

Edited March 16, 2019 by victor

[victor]

20 hours ago, Sir Loorkon said:

 Keeping the ship diversity high by making the best ships rare with the intelligent use of permits. I like that. 

I'd rather say that any decent ship is now behind the permit wall, even the Surprise .... I mean ... do you really think that the Surprise shall be kept a "rare" ship?

Another example: the indefatigable, has always been - since it's introduction in the game - the most used ships in PVE and has been also put behind a PVP wall ... is this it an "intelligent" use of the permits?

At the end of the story - now - only the Belle poule, the Frigate, the Pirate Frigate and the Agamemnon are now "free" from the PVP wall. Do you actually think that all the other ships shall be deemed as "rare" or reserved to PVP players?

I think the devs suppose so, since their mindset is PVP players only on war server, and carebears only on PVE. But this is a big mistake that will cut off the game a lot of potential players that like both PVE and PVP in the same game with the same character.

Edited March 16, 2019 by victor

[victor]

29 minutes ago, Routan said:

Who did  actually  sail a surprise before?

A lot of players (including the most feared PVP pro players) used surprise, mostly people looking for an effective PVP all around cheap ship. Essex is not good for PVP since it lacks chasers.

Anyway, even if your statement was true, this very fact would have been a reason not to make surprise a "rare" ship.

PS: in general I do not feel as much need as you to wait an see. Maybe you wern't playing the game at those times, but this is not the first "austerity"/"pvp mark"/"pvp wall" patch that the devs decided to put in the game, so I have already seen what this kind of things are likely to cause in the game after a couple of months,

 

Edited March 16, 2019 by victor

[victor]

2 hours ago, Routan said:

But it is not game Breaking what is happing now.

you may be true, but the point is another: add a not breaking (yet annoying) change the day before yesterday, another one yesterday, anohter one today, another one tomorrow ... and you end up with too few players to make the game work properly as a MMO.

 

[Sir Loorkon]

5 hours ago, StuntPotato said:

intelligent use of permits' is not the words I'd use to describe it.

So how would you describe it? „Very intelligent“ or „great“ or ... . I mean what is your suggestion to keep up diversity of ships? Using permits seems intelligent to me.

Look at this forum. The best (attention, that is ironic) posts are those where people complain that with the permits and fine woods changes they can not (?) run the best wood PvP ships any more. Of course without doing PvP (or maybe RvR) it should be hard to get those ships, but if a player does not participate in PvP he does not need those ships anyway. The best ship to run away can be made of fir/fir. 

New players should use cheap oak/oak ships or shop ships first, they will get sunk 100 times any way so it is better to sink in a cheap ship and after that those that stay in and learned will have found ways to get better ships. We will all use oak/oak ships at release.

Edited March 16, 2019 by Sir Loorkon

[Israel Hands]

3 hours ago, Routan said:

But it is not game Breaking what is happing now. Ppl have another choise of ship and also the posibility to get acces. Patrole zone made that possible. 

5 rate more ore less died when demasting got a thing. I use Surprice before that, but after demasting think most went bigger ships.

I played last time when we had PvP marks.  Made a bit in OW fighting and Pb’s. But also in patrolezone. I made between 100-200 a week, depending on luck and game time, and ofc what I ells did. My guess with the new system I proberbly will make somewhere between 10-30 cm a week.

Ppl had other choices of ships + woods in the other 'experiments' as well.. the net result was the same every time. Why go back to a dud?

[Israel Hands]

7 minutes ago, Routan said:

So if I got it right. Makes no different at all, why should devs not then have the game they want, hard,- ore softcore makes no different?

It does if you want to see the game succeed post release. In order for the game to be interesting it needs players playing it. The direction this is going is just going to see yet another drop in playerbase and we've seen it all before.. Immediately after a patch ppl come back, see what's what and then they leave because the game has become even more clan-based, even less skill-based and even less solo-player friendly than before. For each patch we see fewer and fewer coming back to see what's what. An empty server isn't a game, it's a vault for the dearly departed dream of what could've been.

[victor]

45 minutes ago, Routan said:

But did we not also have problems with Numbers before. As long I can remember back, Numbers have been an Issue. Just look at steam charts.

But what we see now might be close to the Real Numbers in the game. Alts have little value now, and with the xp wipe. I Think that the Numbers havent dropped big times, do say something.

they have dropped, if you count the January sale on steam mate.

Back in the days - before all this austerity/hardcore frenzy - we had some like 800 players EU prime time.

Edited March 16, 2019 by victor

[van der Clam]

6 hours ago, Slim McSauce said:

You cant even really get a battle in an hour, a not trash one that is, unless you go to pz or something which I mean is like a lobby game on the scale of OW. If you look at the map 100% of the time you'll find almost no info as to where the real hotspots are.

What PvP is trash? The only trash ones I know of are when newbs get ganked by pros. To find action, I always use the Combat News in game...it pretty much sums up exactly where things are going down. And if I see a nation mate or friendly get hit, I know where to hunt.

On another note, people in this forum for the last few days are refusing to look at this game from a new buyer's perspective. They will have no clue what changes were made in the past to be able to compare it to the moment they bought it. I am certain that if you look at every major patch from a "Day One" perspective, you will find nothing that is so detrimentally negative that will make the game unplayable and not enjoyable. This game is lovely. It is beautiful. And it is amazingly fun! And if we are worrying about population, then we need to announce the positives in reviews and to others. ......OR....people can just keep bashing the shit out of it because they keep looking at it from their own perspective that has years of testing and changes.

[victor]

29 minutes ago, Routan said:

They dropped back in May. Why?

- Ppl got tried of  grinding gold to pay for ports.

- Ppl got tired of owning a port, because they didn’t matter. All could be bought by alts.

All had acces to all woods and upgrades basicly. Wm was a problem with the top 4 getting them. Admin changed that. Did Numbers go up, not really. It was the dlc ships that brought up the Numbers.

ok man, see what you want to see. 

The story of this game, of the countless two step ahead end one back patches and the infinite forum wars between pvpers and carebears led me to think that:

This game is struggling in retaining casual and average players. 

And that happened simply because - at a certain points - Devs wanted to chase in the PVE server any player that did not enjoy a full life/hardcore PVP engagement in the game.

If this situation goes on until the launch, the game will probably be a failure (unless you consider a success having a peak of 400 players on Saturday evenings).

 

[victor]

5 minutes ago, Routan said:

How do we know a hardcore game dosent work? How do we know a casual is better?

I do not think that hardcore is better or worse than casual, I think a good game should allow players to engage in both things with the same character, as it happens in EVE online in example (which, BTW, was developed also by a small indie team)

Edited March 16, 2019 by victor

[StuntPotato]

2 hours ago, Routan said:

I have not played Eve, so can’t really talk abouth how it works.  Can you not in NA do it all on the same char?

Can you in eve get everything if you only do the casual way?

You can, but in for most players, no. But that does not matter, there's plenty of content for both, and the pvp is played on forums, in space, and on the market. It is a great game, and there is a free trial, I recommend you try it out. In eve money and contacts is everything, and obscene amounts of cash can be made on the market, safe in hi-sec.

[admin]

4 hours ago, victor said:

 (which, BTW, was developed also by a small indie team)

Hello what are you talking about.

https://imgur.com/a/O9QsaZ5

[Israel Hands]

3 minutes ago, admin said:

Hello what are you talking about.

https://imgur.com/a/O9QsaZ5

Eve is from 2003 and you're posting a pic about revenue in 2016 - 13 years post their, by far, greatest success was introduced to the gaming community - they can afford 330 employees because EVE became so succesfull..

[admin]

30 minutes ago, Israel Hands said:

Eve is from 2003 and you're posting a pic about revenue in 2016 - 13 years post their, by far, greatest success was introduced to the gaming community - they can afford 330 employees because EVE became so succesfull..

It was smaller but still had 50 people all the time mate - they were funded well by VCs too. check their reports
We are bootstrapped and never had more than 2 programmers. Captains should reduce any expectations and only expect things indicated on the steam greenlight page.

[Israel Hands]

1 minute ago, admin said:

It was smaller but still had 50 people all the time mate - they were funded well by VCs too. check their reports
We are bootstrapped and never had more than 2 programmers. Captains should reduce any expectations and only expect things indicated on the steam greenlight page.

We haven't actually been discussing implementation of anything new, just the current patch and the general direction you've taken the game. We've learned the banned way to expect nothing so as not to be disappointed - that doesn't change the fact tho that I would like a skill based game where everyone, the casual as well as the hardcore gamer can have fun. With the current direction I'm guessing neither will have much fun in the long run.. Hardcore players still need someone to compete with and if they leave, then the hardcores leave. If the casuals has the same opportunities as the hardcores then the numbers will rise and everyone will get more content.. Personally I don't believe the missions will create more content - that's just different ways to do the same grind. The content comes from the players and the less players there are, the less content we see.

[admin]

12 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

so are we all supposed to go home and forget NA testing and development, because all goals on Steam Greenlight page have been achieved a long time ago? There is nothing more to expect according to what you're saying. 

The current game exceeds all expectations laid during the steam greenlight and it was only possible due to hard work and tremendous support by this community. Comparisons with large teams will not move things faster. We have a great game providing hours of entertainment already and we can only make it better, step by step. But these steps wont ever compare to 300 people teams. 

[Guest]

Why is everyone talking about eve online?? This is naval action!

[StuntPotato]

2 hours ago, admin said:

The current game exceeds all expectations laid during the steam greenlight and it was only possible due to hard work and tremendous support by this community. Comparisons with large teams will not move things faster. We have a great game providing hours of entertainment already and we can only make it better, step by step. But these steps wont ever compare to 300 people teams. 

You have the one magic ingredient EvE doesn't, superb player vs player combat. Do your best to make that accesible to as many of your players as possible. And get inspiration from EvE on the rest

Hi-Sec - Capital zones, an area where players can relax, play the game, learn the game, and make a decent living, has a thriving economy due to the excellent market system, modelled after a stock exchange, you can alter buy and sell orders at will for a very small fee, and almost everything you'll ever need is player crafted (tech 2 modules).
There are plenty of factions to work for, and they each have different rewards. Special ships and modules.

Lo-Sec - FFA zone, no conquest, higher PVE rewards, better missions, allowing you to get those special ships and modules alot faster.

No-Sec - The wild west, full conquest with station ownership and docking control, owner decides who can dock, the best ncp spawns, the best loot, the best raw materials.

No-Sec NPC controlled space - far from the safety of Hi and lo sec, the most dangerous space in eve, everyone has station access, different factions with high paying missions, different rewards, the pinnacle of carebearing if you got the team to pull it off.

To me, naval action currently has HI-sec (capital zones) and NO-sec NPC controlled space (players cap ports on behalf of an npc organization, they reap some benefits for doing so, but everyone can more or less use the port. A model that fits the period and game well.

The market is a travesty, high fees barring market participation, low number (ten) of unalterable contracts non-stacking contracts (you cant sell and buy a commodity in the same port) compared to EvEs hundreds, fully alterable, low cost and fully stacking buy and sell orders.

A simple change (I hope) would be to upscale the number of contracts, reduce the fees on placing them (tax the sales after the fact, not before), and make them stackable.
Make all resources needed to craft ships, guns and consumables available in the capital cities. Stop seeding player crafted goods. Make the labour cost fluid, the more labour pulled from a port (total from playerbase) the more expensive it gets, remove all ship notes, make all 3rd rates ++ and the bonus ships we've seen in test phase require licenses. If the port is player owned, let the controlling clan decide if it is friendlist only, faction or ffa for extracting resources, let them tax the labour cost in addition to the market. Make the cost of the port a fixed cost + a percentage of all taxes raised and possibly even some raw materials/crafted items.

Make the difference between base woods (oak and fir) and the noble woods less. Make players choose between thickness, armor and crew protection.  Example: Harder woods = more splinters when penned. Lighter woods (faster) burn easier etc.

Make the gap between elite modules and base and easily craftable modules less, as an example pirate rig should just require a blueprint (which you learn and get to keep) from the pirate faction mission chests, and some base wood and hemp, the elite rig requires the special canvas and a more expensive blueprint, also only gotten from the pirate faction (hi-tier mission running chests).

Since the timescale on the OW-map and sea-battles are vastly different, have short join timers on battles in the OW (ignoring BR). Make the reinforcement and capital zones work like they did before the 20 min-patch. Have the capturable ports in immediate vicinity of a capital extend the RF. Don't allow veteran players to seal-club the new guys or risk averse players. But if they want to fight 12+ 1st rate NPC fleets they'll have to venture out.
If done correctly, there would be no need for a PvE server. 

I believe changes like that are what is required, and I believe at least some of them do not require a 50-man team. 

Edited March 17, 2019 by StuntPotato

[Israel Hands]

14 minutes ago, StuntPotato said:

You have the one magic ingredient EvE doesn't, superb player vs player combat. Do your best to make that accesible to as many of your players as possible. And get inspiration from EvE on the rest

Hi-Sec - Capital zones, an area where players can relax, play the game, learn the game, and make a decent living, has a thriving economy due to the excellent market system, modelled after a stock exchange, you can alter buy and sell orders at will for a very small fee, and almost everything you'll ever need is player crafted (tech 2 modules).
There are plenty of factions to work for, and they each have different rewards. Special ships and modules.

Lo-Sec - FFA zone, no conquest, higher PVE rewards, better missions, allowing you to get those special ships and modules alot faster.

No-Sec - The wild west, full conquest with station ownership and docking control, owner decides who can dock, the best ncp spawns, the best loot, the best raw materials.

No-Sec NPC controlled space - far from the safety of Hi and lo sec, the most dangerous space in eve, everyone has station access, different factions with high paying missions, different rewards, the pinnacle of carebearing if you got the team to pull it off.

To me, naval action currently has HI-sec (capital zones) and NO-sec NPC controlled space (players cap ports on behalf of an npc organization, they reap some benefits for doing so, but everyone can more or less use the port. A model that fits the period and game well.

The market is a travesty, high fees barring market participation, low number (ten) of unalterable contracts non-stacking contracts (you cant sell and buy a commodity in the same port) compared to EvEs hundreds, fully alterable, low cost and fully stacking buy and sell orders.

A simple change (I hope) would be to upscale the number of contracts, reduce the fees on placing them (tax the sales after the fact, not before), and make them stackable.
Make all resources needed to craft ships, guns and consumables available in the capital cities. Stop seeding player crafted goods. Make the labour cost fluid, the more labour pulled from a port (total from playerbase) the more expensive it gets, remove all ship notes, make all 3rd rates ++ and the bonus ships we've seen in test phase require licenses. If the port is player owned, let the controlling clan decide if it is friendlist only, faction or ffa for extracting resources, let them tax the labour cost in addition to the market. Make the cost of the port a fixed cost + a percentage of all taxes raised and possibly even some raw materials/crafted items.

Make the difference between base woods (oak and fir) and the noble woods less. Make players choose between thickness, armor and crew protection.  Example: Harder woods = more splinters when penned. Lighter woods (faster) burn easier etc.

Make the gap between elite modules and base and easily craftable modules less, as an example pirate rig should just require a blueprint (which you learn and get to keep) from the pirate faction mission chests, and some base wood and hemp, the elite rig requires the special canvas and a more expensive blueprint, also only gotten from the pirate faction (hi-tier mission running chests).

Since the timescale on the OW-map and sea-battles are vastly different, have short join timers on battles in the OW (ignoring BR). Make the reinforcement and capital zones work like they did before the 20 min-patch. Have the capturable ports in immediate vicinity of a capital extend the RF. Don't allow veteran players to seal-club the new guys or risk averse players. But if they want to fight 12+ 1st rate NPC fleets they'll have to venture out.
If done correctly, there would be no need for a PvE server. 

I believe changes like that are what is required, and I believe at least some of them do not require a 50-man team. 

Couldn't have written it better myself. Agreed.

[LIONOFWALES]

2 hours ago, admin said:

The current game exceeds all expectations laid during the steam greenlight and it was only possible due to hard work and tremendous support by this community. Comparisons with large teams will not move things faster. We have a great game providing hours of entertainment already and we can only make it better, step by step. But these steps wont ever compare to 300 people teams. 

Yes... one step at a time... lets make sure everything is just right before release.

[LIONOFWALES]

10 hours ago, Routan said:

But did we not also have problems with Numbers before. As long I can remember back, Numbers have been an Issue. Just look at steam charts.

Numbers/ I always see players on when I play on PVP server. Please remember that many players will try a game for a short time that is not fully developed yet, then they quit until release of the full game has been implemented. 

Edited March 17, 2019 by LIONOFWALES