On the issue of imported ship permits versus ready imported ships.

[Angus MacDuff]

I have always said that I enjoy all aspects of the game and if it turns into just an arena PVP game, I will probably cut my hours considerably.  @admin, this game has to have an interesting crafting and trading aspect or else it will be populated by only a very few players.  The PVP all stars will dominate and no one else will be interested in providing meat to their fire. Even RVR will be severely damaged by your suggestion in the OP to have developing Clan ports.  The more that a port is developed, the better the chance that it will be taken.  We will have 2 or 3 massive fortresses on the map and no one else will risk putting resources into a glowing target. 

[jodgi]

26 minutes ago, Hullabaloo said:

The opposite is true

It's not, though I appreciate the effort to include me in the grand eco scheme.

You play EVE so I fully understand why you fight for eco.

I've given a very wide berth to EVE, not because of spaceships but because that game is a near perfect example of eco gameplay. 

[Sea Archer]

18 minutes ago, Ligatorswe said:

I remember all the wining about tve economy back then. 🙂

I cannot remember a time where nobody was complaining, still least I liked that economy best. 

[Baptiste Gallouédec]

 Some people (maybe still a few %) would enjoy hauling more if offered more than "set a bearing" and watch you ship go from A to B (or do alt-tab) gameplay  (+ taxes that cut much of the motivation to haul trade goods)

Let's watch & try the devs proposal, nations will still fight for rare woods forests or rare upgrades component spawns + lucrative ports, even more if they can limit access to their own clan or clan+friends to block alts in the nation.  (At least if something is done to prevent the formation of giga l33t clans from ruling the ow with no contest.)

 

Edited April 12, 2019 by Baptiste Gallouédec

[Angus MacDuff]

1 minute ago, Baptiste Gallouédec said:

 Some people (maybe still a few %) would enjoy hauling more if offered more than "set a bearing" and watch you ship go from A to B (or do alt-tab) gameplay  (+ taxes that cut much of the motivation to haul trade goods)

Let's watch & try the devs proposal, nations will still fight for rare woods forests or rare upgrades component spawns + lucrative ports, even more if they can limit access to their own clan or clan+friends to block alts in the nation.  (At least if something is done to prevent the formation of giga l33t clans from ruling the ow with no contest.)

 

I don't even understand the "reduced hauling" aspect on this.  I have a port for ship building and get some of my mats there.  All the other mats are 1 port away for either farming or purchase.  The hauling is a short distance and if I'm caught by some lucky PVP'er, there is content.  Why is this a problem that needs to be solved?

[jodgi]

11 minutes ago, Borch said:

are you saying that you are only able to play the game with DLC ships?

No, not at all. Let's see if I'm able to explain...

12 minutes ago, Borch said:

You are PvP'er no?

Yes. I am someone who likes to play against people exclusively. I have limited patience with anything and everything that is not pure PvP and I seek to avoid it as hard as I can.

16 minutes ago, Borch said:

Sure you don't have to participate in eco stuff

I have done a lot of crafting in order to have all kinds of fighting equipment available to me. I've used alts so that it has only taken me about 5-10 minutes each week to get more stuff than I need to craft whatever I want. Things are a bit different now. I no longer have access to whatever I want but I'm kinda numbed into accepting that I will have to do with oak/oak ships mostly without meta mods.

I have all the prem ships and I will use them from time to time, but I lose more cash when I lose prems than when I lose my shitty crafted ships. Own crafted ships will be my main workhorses so that I avoid having to go out and get reals. I know that I can go out and print reals but I'd rather take up knitting or something.

26 minutes ago, Borch said:

you can always buy ships from admiralty

WAY too expensive and they're usually worse than own crafted oak/oak ships which are significantly less expensive in my setup. The selection is rather poor and it's a no-go for me to sail around looking for an almost decent ship.

30 minutes ago, Borch said:

auction from filthy eco players

Nothing is more unreasonably expensive than buying ships from crafters. Reals and doubloons is what I lack the most due to my PvE aversion. My crafting setup allows me to make ships for almost nothing and I occasionally help out fellow PvPers by giving them ships just as I have been given ships by other PVPers for free.

36 minutes ago, Borch said:

just cap them in OW, AI or players.

Capping bots is just like buying from admiralty. I exchange my time for a ship that is usually worse than those I craft myself in no time. Doran recently gave me two Russian player ships he capped, so capping ships from players is indeed viable. (I crafted a bunch of endys to fill his docks before the changes hit)

44 minutes ago, Borch said:

What exactly is the way you like to play this game?

I want the impossible, but I need the PvP/PvE ratio to be extremely high and I struggle with motivation in consequence.

14 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Why is this a problem that needs to be solved?

I'm getting along (using alts) just fine without it, but I welcome anything that allows me to save additional time. Except for rare woods it will be just as quick for me to click out a crafted ship as it is to click out a prem ship.

[Angus MacDuff]

3 minutes ago, jodgi said:

I'm getting along (using alts) just fine without it, but I welcome anything that allows me to save additional time. Except for rare woods it will be just as quick for me to click out a crafted ship as it is to click out a prem ship.

I get what you are saying, in all of your posts, but you are most definitely speaking for yourself and not the majority.  That is perfectly fair...it's your game, you should play it the way you want.  The problem with this is that if your opinion were to dominate, this would quickly turn into an arcady arena game.  I have my own preferences also, but if we don't look at the big picture and fix the eco aspect, your style of gameplay will also be hurt, because there will be too few players to sustain your game.

[jodgi]

3 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

but you are most definitely speaking for yourself

YES!

3 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

and not the majority.

Sure, I'm probably a unique fool on the hill. This is a big subject that I tried to process in another topic. 

9 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

The problem with this is that if your opinion were to dominate

You can't put that on me. I'm just one weirdo with an opinion. If my opinion dominates it's because of all the other dudes who share my opinion, I don't know how many we are but we're always told we're an insignificant poot in the statistical universe.

12 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

I have my own preferences also

And I approve of you fighting for it.

[Barbarosa]

I didn't knew that many of the DLC supporters are pure PvP players.  From now on will be checking for their names in combat news.

I seriously doubt that, with DLC ships, the main desire is to minimize the hassle of economy. From my perspective they mostly try to minimize the value of their losses. They know that they will loose, they don't want to keep trying-learning cheap/captured ships, instead they want free printed decent ship that has no value of loosing. 

FFS how DLC ships are so relevant with avoiding economy when we have no working economy? Ship crafting was never hard, people were gifting ships to each other like candies. (However, I stand strongly that they kill the sense of having working economy.)

The fear of loosing is main motivator to support DLC ships. 

Edited April 12, 2019 by Barbarosa

[Vizzini]

Regardless of peoples preferred playstyles , i always think it's foolish to risk alienating a % of the the playerbase. I always advocated an arena style zone in Bermuda , that people could teleport to, if there was also a Freeport up there. The fact that the patrol zone and 1v1 zone doesn't seem to have brought back any players from cryo sleep is worrying

DLC ships are fine , stopping access to other ships or making it a lot harder , just seems like trying to funnel people towards the cashpoint. This is the worry when you have no idea what game we are getting for the money we have already paid

 

this is the concern for most, they could handle a wrecked economy if the items they wanted were achievable. Right now certain ships are  hidden behind an rng wall that has many feeling it's on purpose and for one reason only

[jodgi]

13 minutes ago, Barbarosa said:

The fear of loosing is main motivator to support DLS ships.

I think you're on to something. The fear isn't always rational, but the problem of perception annoyingly remains despite logic.

5 minutes ago, Vizzini said:

The fact that the patrol zone and 1v1 zone doesn't seem to have brought back any players from cryo sleep is worrying

But are you surprised?

Arena airheads get tired of the ganking which makes us lose ships and run out of ship tows. Ganking isn't fun and no tows is a showstopper. 1v1 zone is without rewards for the loser because of farmers. PZ is gank-zones because of sandbox and faction based fear of griefing (refer to admin's posts on the subject).

[Slim McSauce]

10 minutes ago, jodgi said:

Arena airheads get tired of the ganking which makes us lose ships and run out of ship tows. Ganking isn't fun and no tows is a showstopper. 1v1 zone is without rewards for the loser because of farmers. PZ is gank-zones because of sandbox and faction based fear of griefing (refer to admin's posts on the subject).

That's all we wanted to know. See, I knew the problem was somewhere else. Too bad DLC is already here, we could still go back and fix these problems. Tows for a price, 1.5x BR, a fairer game not so built on the edges of extremes. Hey, maybe it would work. Just gotta let go of the toxic ganking culture which almost no one will admit they hate.

Edited April 12, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[Vizzini]

5 minutes ago, jodgi said:

I think you're on to something. The fear isn't always rational, but the problem of perception annoyingly remains despite logic.

But are you surprised?

Arena airheads get tired of the ganking which makes us lose ships and run out of ship tows. Ganking isn't fun and no tows is a showstopper. 1v1 zone is without rewards for the loser because of farmers. PZ is gank-zones because of sandbox and faction based fear of griefing (refer to admin's posts on the subject).

No I am not surprised, I don't see it as a viable game play option for me and therefore for some others also. Move the patrol zone to Bermuda, have a freeport up there so people can teleport to it , switch the map daily and then the gank zones won't cause any effect on the rest of the map.

 

Players whined about not being able to find pvp , admin put a big marker on the map with rewards and still people don't go there in sufficient quantity to have raised the pop. If the game is fun, word gets out, players come back, pop starts to rise. What we are seeing is the opposite

1 tiny portion of the map, which is useless in itself cannot be set aside for the players who only want to 1v1  or have a min battle ? That in turn frees up the rest of the map to be played as the others want. Both sides would be happier

None of us will end up with the game we want, we will get the game we are given

[Angus MacDuff]

The Solo PVP zone is, in effect, a PVP Arena.  The problem with it is that it's in the middle of the Gank PVP zone.  If Devs were to segregate it (by a great distance) from the normal PVP zone it would be a perfect 1v1 zone.  The question is...would that be enough to make the pure PVP'ers happy?  They would still have to get there.  Certainly, it would be a happy place for all the DLC ships where loss is not an issue.  Still a big problem for those with irreplaceable ships......because they are in fact irreplaceable.

[Slim McSauce]

10 minutes ago, Vizzini said:

Players whined about not being able to find pvp , admin put a big marker on the map with rewards and still people don't go there in sufficient quantity to have raised the pop. If the game is fun, word gets out, players come back, pop starts to rise. What we are seeing is the opposite

This is how I know you don't know game design. Out of all the options, improvements to RVR, OW attack objectives, Raids, Port Blockades you think some measely  drawn STATIC circle on the map is going to advance pvp? Patrols are lazy, not real content. An Open world game needs worldly solutions and you think a pseudo lobby instance is going to break the mold? Sir I laugh. Ha!

Edited April 12, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[Angus MacDuff]

3 minutes ago, Borch said:

Why would you need anything better than oak/oak or whatever else capped or from admiralty if you got perfect spots to do PvP in the form of patrol zones? You get combat marks for sinking and being sunk there which you can in turn sell for reals. Why can't you use capped ships there? It takes minutes really to cap a frigate and you get that bot ship with equipped cannons as well. Actually you could cap yourself players ship in patrol zone if not for the fact that most ships there are DLC's (inconvenient convenience).

This is a perfect illustration of my point on rare ships.  @Borch makes an absolutely valid point .  We just take crap ships to the PZ because we are there to farm the rewards and don't care about losing.  I want to care about losing though.  I hate to sink.  I would much rather take a ship of higher quality in there and have a competitive fight....not overly concerned about a loss because I can replace it.  Instead, I don't dare take a good ship, because I may not see a permit for a replacement for months.  I have redeemed more than a dozen Captains chests and only seen one Endy permit.  One Trinc and 3 Surprise.  Some other trash (to me).

[jodgi]

19 minutes ago, Borch said:

if you got perfect spots to do PvP in the form of patrol zones? You get combat marks for sinking and being sunk there which you can in turn sell for reals.

True. PZs are ostensibly made for me. I used to do PZ's exclusively during their early days. The old "gank-or be ganked" mentality quickly took hold of PZ and my interest waned. I'm not really that hot for medals, I want fun fights more than anything. 

 

23 minutes ago, Borch said:

It takes minutes really to cap a frigate

It takes me seconds to craft a better ship.

 

24 minutes ago, Borch said:

How come that you are loosing more when being sunk in DLC ship opposite to crafted ship?

Cannons cost roughly half the ship. When I craft a ship I do it so cheaply I get more than the cost back. I lose only a small portion of the gun crafting cost. If I take a DLC out and lose it I lose the full cost of the guns because there is no insurance for DLC ships.

 

25 minutes ago, Borch said:

but you loose the most time gathering mats to craft that ship.

I already told you I'm more than fine with spending 5-10 min. each week. It will be less after port investment.

 

26 minutes ago, Borch said:

Reals from insurance shouldnt matter

But I explained how insurance is great for me because I craft on a budget; I get almost everything back and have no need to grind cash.

 

27 minutes ago, Borch said:

Where do you use your best wood DLC

Have all the ships, haven't used them yet because they cost me more reals.

 

29 minutes ago, Borch said:

or crafted ships then?

I've used crafted ships exclusively. Like I said I did PZs a lot, but have almost stopped. I've been sitting inside the solo PZ with Diana, frigate and cerb. Noone would tag. I've had a bit of fun in the Nassau solo zone, but I lost my last Niag a few weeks ago trying to get out. Without rewards for the loser I fear solo PZ will become a fake feature, I may sit there because I know I get everything back if I lose the ship, but people prefer the gank zones in the hope they end up on the strong side + some rewards even if they end up on the weak side.

I've done a tiny bit of OW hunting as well. Me and Laik hunted for an hour in the general area around Navasse without finding anything, as we were heading back to LT we ran into a herc we smashed out of boredom. I've also hunted solo in a cerb. I figured anyone would engage me in such a shitty ship. A brit req ran away but I was finally able to sink a Prussian Indiaman before I gave up on the cerb experiment.

Nobody came for a full 90 minutes.

37 minutes ago, Borch said:

Why do you care for reals if you are not interested in any other NA part besides PvP?

I don't care about reals. I just take great care so I don't ever (hopefully) have to go grind reals.

[Mr. Doran]

5 minutes ago, jodgi said:

Without rewards for the loser I fear solo PZ will become a fake feature

 

Fear would imply that there is any alternative answer. 

[jodgi]

1 minute ago, Mr. Doran said:

 

Fear would imply that there is any alternative answer. 

You know how I am a dreamer bordering on sheer stupidity...

[Barbarosa]

13 hours ago, Hullabaloo said:

It's not just 'stuff. It's not just one thing that players who like it can do or not, it's the absolute lifeblood of an mmo. Without 'eco stuff' there is no game!

The combat mechanics are very good, yes. But this alone can't sustain an mmo. Fight after fight with DLC where no one cares about losing a ship will get very boring very quickly for many (i think most) people (it already has for me). There's just no point to it. NAL failed, miserably, so we already have some evidence for this.

15 hours ago, jodgi said:

Why do you seek to keep us from playing the game how we like?

The opposite is true. A working economy with multitudes of roles for players to play, crafters, traders, haulers, hunters, RvR'ers, PvPers, PvE'ers, soloists, duellists: each having a space to play and experiencing how those players interact and respond to conflict is what made the game enjoyable and interesting and is what should have been developed and expanded on. 
NA badly lacked this before and now it has been all but abandoned. This has been (in my personal experience) by FAR the most cited reason for active players leaving the game.

NA suffers from low pop and so there is a shortage of PvP and the player base clamours for more (understandably). Features like DLC, Patrols, slim lined crafting, reduced hauling requirements, less R Zones have been promoted to encourage more 'fighting' but this is only ever a short term 'fix'. The econ stuff needed to be developed further, so there was more to do and players could take part in the game world, this attracts more players and then with higher pop the PvP pretty much looks after itself anyway.

An arena style PvP game with the only economy remaining, dominated by a handful of players and where the only option left to take part is to buy DLC does not seem to me to be a very attractive model for potential new players. 

Very well put. Want to underline this once again before got lost in long paragraphs of people who pushes the game to their no exit one ways with their simple motto, if I can't have it, no one should. 

[Christiaen Stelling]

I believe it is as the @admin said;

DLC ships are:

1. For players who do not have the time/wish to participate in the economy

2. Ships that are different from other vessels in the game (A variation or just the same ship with a different name)

 

However, this does not take away that economy is indeed important for an MMO as we have so brightly discussed here, let me throw in my two cents here:

The economy from 2016/ early 2017 was very enjoyable for me, it got better imho when ships went to 1 durability as this adds to the need to craft more ships. If we compare this to the current economy the only main difference is that ships are, material wise, cheaper to manufacture and easier to manufacture (not taking permits into account). I do not mind the economy being changed like this as it makes it a little more accesible for players due to the lower LH requirements as all the parts were removed.

 

As for the DLC ships in the economy; Yes, they are able to select any wood and are redeemable every 24h and will remove some of the need for crafted ships, HOWEVER the highest rate is a 4th rate, admittedly it is a darn good ship but not overpowered like the Hercules and Le Requin when they started out. I think we can say that the Dev's learned from that mishap. So, these ships only impact the economy for a small bit, since there are ships in the same class that have outright better performance than their DLC "counterpart". This does not take away that at the moment there is almost no need for crafting or any fuel in the economy as there are no players to burn ships. I do believe that IF the game releases, gets wiped AND manages to gather a decent playerbase at launch the economy will settle down in a decent way.

Do not get me wrong, there are definitely points that could do with improving in the economy but as is I do not believe it is that bad. It has been made fairly simple compared to 2 years ago but the essentials are there.

 

Then onto the last point of my essay; Port investments (since they were already discussed here).

I think that this should be a possibility however I do not think that it should allow a clan or nation to just outright get all the mats without hauling as that would be a rather essential part to a functioning economy in an MMO (take for example EVE and PotBS) as they require players to produce resources in a certain location which has a higher risk level and transport them to a safe area where their production facilities are set up.

The way to go about the Port Investments in my opinion is to allow the owning clan to invest in the settlement which could have some or all of the following effects:

• Increased productivity/ labour hour discount.
• "Stronger" forts/towers (Ex. forts have 9 pounders standard, and can go up to 24 (32?) pounders with investment.
• Ability to control buildings in other settlements (Ex. Outpost in Caracas has been invested into and I have production means in Willemstad, that would enable to me produce my goods in Willemstad) or enable players to build in their other outposts from the invested outpost.
• Discount on locally produced goods (Say 10%, which basically makes it tax free for clan members).
• Lower building costs.
• More AI traders (Foreign and Local).

*Some of these are taken from the current clan settings as I believe they would make more sense if you invested in the city, which improves your clan's standing with said city and thus will grant you more privileges.

 

Kind regards,

Abraham

 

[Mr. Doran]

On 4/12/2019 at 2:26 AM, Hullabaloo said:

There's just no point to it. NAL failed, miserably, so we already have some evidence for this.

 

 

On 3/15/2019 at 1:04 AM, Mr. Doran said:

In Sea Trials you had people being actively siphoned off to OW once that became an option and I am sure portions of the population outright quitting once it was definitely confirmed there would be an OW. Simultaneously its not fair to compare numbers to a game you had to pay for on pay-pal that was not even on steam until late January if my memory serves me right; along with the fact users were being siphoned to OW prior to that point along with my latter point. NAL, in your own words, was largely a grind test to see how long the grind would take. Including the fact that we were forced to fight bots is it any surprise to you that your PVP game did not have a strong retention rate? How many players did you think would find it fun to be grind slaves for the sake of data collection? Worst crime of all was the combat-model was imbalanced and not being attended to at all during the duration of NAL. The imbalanced funky one that existed on the OW build was better than what we got on NAL. The farming and battle imbalance was absolutely horrific with the cannon grinding. You could have a 12lb Constitution fighting a 24lb one.

 

What could have gone wrong, right?

 

I loved my Sea-Trials experience. So much so I had the most amount of duels and at some point if not by the very end the most amount of PVP battles. 

I absolutely hated my NAL experience to the core. Not because I was spoiled rotten by OW. But because NAL did not even come close to ST in its ability to provide PVP. The exact polar reactions should say a lot about the quality of experience between the two products. 

 

On 2/23/2019 at 12:58 PM, Mr. Doran said:

 

    They can’t be entirely blamed for trying. Even if all I say is true if the life-support plug was pulled it may produce an irreparable blight that will follow them to oblivion; maybe its just sunk cost fallacy (lel). Critics of the arena model cite Legends poor player retention as the smoking gun of the sustainability of the model and that OW should be the only focus. What is simultaneously failed to be mention is NAL was nothing more than a poor effort on part of Game-Labs. NAL was nothing more than a horrific grind test where you were forced to play with and against bots most of the time. Including the fact that it was missing key combat components such as double shot or, the fact that the demasting penetration tables were so out of whack as to make demasting non-existent, or the fact that there was not even a sail repair but a cool-down that could be used as many times as you could pop it in a battle.

    The original arena product provided in Sea Trials was better designed and more well thought out than what we were provided with NAL. In ST the grind was not sadistically unreasonable as there was no cannon grinding. In ST we were never forced to fight bots when queuing for PVP. In ST we even had a duel room, the fleet battle room (Trafalgar), and even a custom battle room. If Game-Labs followed just to start with what they already had done and knew worked NAL would have not been the disaster zone it was. The only thing that can be hoped for is next time they consider knowledge and lessons they had already known five years in the past.

 

 

[LeBoiteux]

@Mr. Doran in parenthesis :

Please allow me to add in your description of what players expected, during the passage from Sea trials to OW, two kinds of pro-OW : the MMO fans (who got NA OW with clans, trading, RvR, crafting...) and others dreaming of a more simulation/historical/realistic experience in navigating, sailing and fighting with weather conditions, shallow waters... (often less interested in crafting, trading, economy...).

btw GL I am sure there's still a market for the latter. 🙂

Edited April 13, 2019 by LeBoiteux

[Capitalism]

On 4/12/2019 at 6:01 AM, jodgi said:

It's not, though I appreciate the effort to include me in the grand eco scheme.

You play EVE so I fully understand why you fight for eco.

I've given a very wide berth to EVE, not because of spaceships but because that game is a near perfect example of eco gameplay. 

Funny enough, it also has ten+ thousands of active daily players and an extremely vibrant PvP, PvE, RvR, and social tapestry to satisfy all play styles. 

Coincidence?

[Barbarosa]

If you love lobby based game so much why you didn't supported Legends when it was tested? The game test was shot down in 1 week for obvious reasons. There was no campaign to not play it, many were excited, nobody jumped with ideas about how bad it would be.

Your NA Legend failed, designed for players exactly like you and for casuals who have 1 hour per day.

Why you are so keen to push this game to another failure?

I wholeheartedly believe that you are not here to improve this game by advocating lobby style gaming. You are here to kill the fun others have. None of you were part of RvR glories/failures, none of you enjoy PvP as you claim here (pvp players know each other, cause they encounter each other, you are not among them), none of you enjoy nation drama, conquests and losses, none of you love trading, none of you enjoy sailing in OW, in which you have no idea what will happen next. I bet you spend more time in forums than in game. 

However, I admit that you have won the forum war. RvR/OW players either banned or very few remained posting in forums. Some enjoying playing the game in their limited spare time and many disappointed just waiting for release to see how it will be.

People bought the game as open world sandbox game. Server population is proof that their expectations were not met.

Dear developers, you can not design this game by surrounding yourself and  listening minority of players who never represented the NA community. I can assure you that their understanding of the game is very limited. It was very sad to see some moderators seeking to join a RvR clan to experience it properly after 4 years of development.

Edited April 13, 2019 by Barbarosa