NA-Arena

[Puchu]

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, 

@admin said, that, if we paid for the arena server, then he could make it happen. This gives hope to everybody who has less then 2h playtime per day he can invest. And it also gives hope to everybody who wants to train and help and fight against players from the same nation in the art of the wonderful naval action combat which we all so dearly love and appreciate. 

Here are some Bulletpoints on how I personally would love the Arena to be designed. Feel free to add your thoughts on this. If this succeeds it will be glorious. If it fails, it will have been our last chance. See this as a whishlist. For now the intention is not to make a completely new game. All this is meant to be is 1 server for an arena mode.

General premises: 

• No grind!
• No bots!
• No loss!  

Lobby:

• Only player made matchmaking: You should be able to choose what team you want to play on. 
• There could be queues for different playmodes 1vs1, and XvsX. I dont think we need to specify the XvsX, since the ppl in the lobby could decide that themselves. Once everybody clicks: "ready" then the instance will start, no matter the balance, no matter the amount of players on each side. If ppl want assymetric battles, then they should be able to create them.
• Lobby while on the OW: If possible you should be able to be in the waiting lobby while doing stuff on the open world. If you get dragged into an ow battle, you will be removed from the queue. If you get dragged into an arena fight, you will join that fight with your preset arena ship. After the arena you will be teleported back to the ship and position you were in before.

Ships, mods, books, cannons and perks:

• Free selection: Before you log into the queue you can preselect your ship and the mods and perks and books and port bonuses that you would like to play with. It could be handled like another outpost where you can have a set of ships that you preset yourself for the arena. 
• Access to everything: Since there should be no grind, everybody should have access to everything there is at all times. So you can either set out in a supership or do some testing in a specially designed ship
• Transparency: People in the Lobby should be able to see what ship you selected, so people can balance the fights themselves if they so desire. 
• Balance yourselves: It would be lovely to be able to change the ship while still staying in the lobby for balancing reasons. "Oh santissima would be too big for this battle, lets change to a Bellona to make it more even" "Thanks mate!"

Instance:

• No closing circle, Very large circle of death (At least ST size)
• No land: This could be changed later to have different "Maps" but for the first iteration, I would personally like to just have a plain playing field. (Also the land in the background allways drops my fps )
• Even starting position: Duels should be starting with perfectly even wind. Facing of the ships could be either downwind or facing each other. (Sea Trials distance was fine imo)
• Even starting position: Group battles should be setup in 2 lines like in ST. Out of cannon range. The Order of ships should be decided either by shipsize with the biggest ship in front, or by the players positioning within the lobby so they can position themselves. 

Rewards:

• No rewards: To make it simple, I would suggest there being no rewards. If you want to gain something, you can allways go onto the ow, where you can also loose said thing.
• No Leaderboards: This is a little tricky, but here is the reasoning. Leaderboards will make people a) cheat the leaderboards or b) not try out new things or c) behave strangely, like flee just to get the opponent to leave out of boredom so they can get the "win" out of it. The arena should be about the fun of playing and fighting, not about the letters on the exit screen. The players themselves will allways know who really won.

Non-owners:

• Free trial for non owners: There could be a short free trial mode for all NA users, so they can get a feel for what the Arena is and if they want to buy it. That could be something like a free 10 battles pass.
• There could be a tradeable expireing permit that every owner gets as a redeemable so he can drag 1 non owner into 1 arena battle per day.

Same lobby for both servers:

• The arena could be accessible for PvP and PvE payers alike. I dont know if the PvE-Crowd would want that, and i dont know how hard it would be to program that, but if it's super easy, one could make it available for both servers, so the PvE-Community can also get access to this feature.

 

Feel free to add your whishes, ideas and thoughts to this thread.

@admin Please tell us what of these whishes are realistic and what your price calculations are. Hopefully we can make this happen together so more people can enjoy that glorious combat at the heart of Naval Action.

[Meraun]

Not for me,  but good luck anyway! 

[Ketunpoika]

I want same pills that Mr. @Puchu takes 😲

[Norfolk nChance]

@Puchu

Love the idea and have stated this a few times, even in the NA-Legends forum section. There are unfortunately some issues in developing a realistic NA arena game.

https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/30070-idea-na-legends-post-na-ow-launch/?tab=comments#comment-654204

Your comments all look basically agreeable, but how does the game NA-L pay for itself as a business? I think it should be offered FREE to play the base game. I doubt as a MONTHLY sub like EvE Online would sit well with players? Do you agree...?

Arena Uses NA-OW as entry...

This is probably hard to sell. I’ve already bought the game NA-OW and then offered a DLC ARENA version. Its actually the best way I can see it ever happening, but its marketing is arse about tit. Offering a FREE trial to Non-NA-OW users complicates things as they’ll still need to BUY OW before accessing ARENA...?

Mechanics

I think it needs to be a separate Game but tied to the NA-Franchise. Ships and Combat Models need to be the same as PvP/PvE and updated on the same server cycles. NA-2 again depending on direction maintenance management needs to be streamlined. All different models will drown the platforms.

Copy WoWs, but don’t...

Look in the link above how they do it. They have a much weaker combat model. An easier learning curve and yet a grind path that actually works. In an ARENA game your Player Character needs even more attention on its historical profile compared to OW. This keeps retention interest high. At the moment this does not exist in any Game-Labs Games.

The downside or major complaint of WoWs from players is Localization. NA-OW I can fight @rediii in Europe or @Sir Texas Sir in the US and I based in Hong Kong. WoWs I cannot cross servers, I need to restart with a separate PC on each server. In NA-OW, the problem with this is PING rates. EU the best then US then ASIA, to lower these rates additional servers would be needed in the US and ASEAN locals. This cost would be needed in the long term otherwise them Korean Boys will just laugh at it...

Does @admin need the Hassel...?

He’s stated the player drop off in NA-L testing proved there was no interest in this style of play. With respect to the BOSS, that’s unfair. I explain why in my post. However, it’s a good excuse with UA-Age of Sail, UA-Dreadnaught and This Land is my land all in development stages.

To make NA-L work it needs to copy the basic WoWs model of Out of Game content that drives the in-game action. NA-L would need a dedicated client driven team that pushes content and DLC to pay for it. This on a continual basis... No Game-Labs Game as ever produced an out of Game client driven mechanic as yet. Its not their skill set. This is why I believe a NA-L style game will fail if ever launched. GL needs to learn a new way of client interfacing... @admin doesn’t need that hassle.

 

To Close

I think an internal DLC feature is at best what you could expect. For an ARENA style business to survive and thrive it needs more than a NA-OW client base, a brilliant combat model, and stunning graphics...

I hope am proved wrong,

 

Norfolk nChance [ELITE]

 

[Puchu]

1 hour ago, Norfolk nChance said:

I think an internal DLC feature is at best what you could expect. For an ARENA style business to survive and thrive it needs more than a NA-OW client base, a brilliant combat model, and stunning graphics...

 

3 hours ago, Puchu said:

 For now the intention is not to make a completely new game. 

Exactly. I hope we can get a duel and instant pvp-room within the na ow framework. For all those who love the combat and dislike or dont have time for the ow. I think they can both benefit from each other and complement themselves. 

Imo it would not be too difficult to have that arena be sold without the open world. You could take the port interface and every time you want to click on "leave port" you will be brought to a page where you can buy na ow.

[Puchu]

If you would ask me to design a proper arena game for naval action, i would be 100% up to it. But it needs to be done properly, like you said. Copying true and tried methods from other games , properly tested and so on, but i am very sure it will be enough of a success to make decent money if done right. And certainly ... it will be a completely different audience from those who love na ow. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

The German location is very bad for most none EU players.  I get like 125-145 here in Central US (Texas).   While in other EU games that have servers in the UK, France, Iceland I get around 85 ping.   Back on the GLOBAL server which was on the US east coast (NJ area) I would get around 45-48.   Which isn't bad at all.   My issue is more the desync and lag that we get hit with some times.  They really need to move the server to a more central location for all.  I know they mention about doing a SEA/AU server, but really will ya'll want to be on with a bunch of Chinese and Koreans?