Plans for Reputation and Sailing changes

[DarkValver]

On 7/23/2020 at 12:37 PM, admin said:

Captains

Here is brief information on the next large update. 

• Karma/Reputation system update
  • The goal is simple - to provide some form of neutrality and reduce amount of negative exploits that happen because of ability to join battles for other nations
  • Implementation
    • Positive reputation
      • All players will start with positive reputation. They will be able to enter all ports on the map in any ship, will be able to build buildings and outposts. They will be allowed to participate in honorable activities like defend themselves from any attack, or join port battles for their nation to defend it - honorable activities. Only defensive activities or port battles are allowed for such players.
      • In short: players who play defensively will experience gameplay similar to the Peace server.

 

So , a player with Positive reputation can have an Outpost on another nation, were rare goods drop and place buy contracts?

[BlueEagleGER]

7 hours ago, Henry Long Castle said:

I was doing competitive sailing for around 8 years, Optimist, then 420 class then 470 class. When we would enter the "shit" as we called it, of an other boat we definitely felt it. Sudden loss of power and change in wind direction. The boat would get destabilized, loss of power in the sails meant we had to quickly rush leeward to prevent the boat from healing on the windward side ( that was when sailing upwind for example).

@Admin keep in mind, you cannot possibly compare modern bermuda rigged racing dinghies designed for gliding such as the 420 or 470, where the crew has often around or more than twice the mass of the whole boat, to frigates or ships of the line of this game's time period regarding inertia and wind shadow behaviour.

Talking to dinghy racers such as Henry is fine, but please value the input of  those "who sailed bigger ships", as you put it.

Edited July 24, 2020 by BlueEagleGER
spelling error

[Hethwill]

10 hours ago, Koltes said:

The online population is a single most important indicator of how the product is doing in general. Devs want players to be happy and this is a great goal. But they only target a very small number of individuals. Most that playing are not happy with the gameplay, but we do play because we love the setting and... we hope it will improve.
A great game design would bring a huge influx of new and returned players. More players more DLC content is sold means more $$$ for the devs. More players more OW and RVR content means happier players in general. We DO suffer from inactivity due to low pop. If you cant see this then you are in denial

 

Me wanting more simulation and less mmo magic doesn't mean i don't care about population In truth I always believe a game that delivers what it intends to, especially regarding historical periods, will always have a community. 

NOTE: You refer EVE in all your posts like everyone knows it... There's players in NA that this is one of the few computer game they play. That's all, this one fellow have only have 2 games on the PC ever. NA and another one. They have zero clue what EVE is  but they know what NA is.  And that is what matters IMO. And they probably even sail tall ships seasonally  

That being said you aren't wrong, and I am not wrong. Hence why i wondered why i was quoted, as i'm not interested to serve as justification to prove a point of view. All are valid. The game is the NA Dev's and I am not a NA dev, nor are you.

Fair winds.

 

 

[Lizzo]

I have a simple solution for the current outcry regarding the much more expensive wood: Just give each player 10M reals as redeemable. This compensates for the months of back and forth with the wood statistics, but it is also a little help for the next ships, which everyone can use. It also reduces the gap between rich and poor, because the rich players won't notice almost nothing of it anyway.

[Henry Long Castle]

2 hours ago, BlueEagleGER said:

@Admin kepp in mind, you cannot possibly compare modern bermuda rigged racing dinghies designed for gliding such as the 420 or 470, where the crew has often around or more than twice the mass of the whole boat, to frigates or ships of the line of this game's time period regarding inertia and wind shadow behaviour.

Talking to dinghy racers such as Henry is fine, but please value the input of  those "who sailed bigger ships", as you put it.

As I said, on the section you did not quote, larger vessels wont be affected the same way as the dinghies ofc (there is nothing you can do to prevent a frigate for example from heeling leeward regarding crew positioning) Ballast is going to prevent that from happening so you dont have to worry about that. The larger the ship the more momentum it will carry thus making easier to just push through the shadow zone if it is fast enough compared to the other vessel that is creating the shadow. However the wind will have the same effects on your sails. If sailing upwind for example the direction will suddenly change (turn towards your bow)as you enter the zone making you head down from the original wind direction. Failing to do that will make the sails stall, just as you do when you are trying to slow down using sails in game. 

P.S. 420, 470 dinghies are made of enhanced polyester

Edited July 24, 2020 by Henry Long Castle

[BlueEagleGER]

Yes, I am aware of what you wrote. I just wanted to point out that you draw from your dinghy knowlegde and -as you know and wrote- will transfer this to much larger and heavier ships. This is not the same to people, who Admin apparently knows, that have actual experience regarding "big ship" behaviour.

I also sailed Optimist and 420 for 10 years, with some H-, and Folkboat regatta experience as well. What exactly do you want to express with that enhanced polyester PS?

[Swedish Berserker]

On 7/23/2020 at 12:37 PM, admin said:

Captains

Here is brief information on the next large update. 

• Karma/Reputation system update
  • The goal is simple - to provide some form of neutrality and reduce amount of negative exploits that happen because of ability to join battles for other nations
  • Implementation
    • Positive reputation
      • All players will start with positive reputation. They will be able to enter all ports on the map in any ship, will be able to build buildings and outposts. They will be allowed to participate in honorable activities like defend themselves from any attack, or join port battles for their nation to defend it - honorable activities. Only defensive activities or port battles are allowed for such players.
      • In short: players who play defensively will experience gameplay similar to the Peace server.
    • Standard (current reputation)
      • If they attack the enemy player of another nation the reputation with that nation will drop to standard (combat rep) and the player will experience the game the way it plays now on the War server. He will be able to enter enemy ports in a trading ship, but won't be able to craft there. 
    • Negative reputation (false flag karma)
      • If the player joins the battle for ANOTHER nation for example against another nation (under false flag) - his reputaiton against that nation drops to negative. 
      • Example: British player joins the battle on the Swedish side against Spain. His reputation against spain will drop and he will no longer be able to join Spanish side in the future, and potentially won't be able to use spanish ports in any vessel.
    • 3 reputation levels will be shown on map. Map will have a button allowing player to reset his reputation to positive by paying a very large sum of doubloons.
  • This feature will allow true neutral trader crafter gameplay, will bring persistence to some decisions and will reduce alts or friends abuse in battles. 
• Battle sails and wind mechanics update
  • Wind works on sails proportionally and is not linear. First 100m of sail area has most effect on speed. Last 100 m of sail area has least effect on speed. 
  • It works the same with damage - losing first 50% of sails will NOT lose you 50% of speed.
  • This will make battle sails work historically allowing players to retain speed and maneuverability.  
  • It is time to make the sailing model even better by adding this into the game. 
• Graphical update for some national towns
  • Several national towns will receive a visual overhaul. 
• Battle Flags. 
  • Long overdue flags will be added to the game.

Discuss

Chance of wind shadow just increased by 30% from 3%. Time to practice station keeping with @Charles Caldwell

 

Destroying PVP 

[Henry Long Castle]

37 minutes ago, BlueEagleGER said:

What exactly do you want to express with that enhanced polyester PS?

Misread Bermuda rigged for Bermuda made idk why XD

[DeRuyter]

7 hours ago, admin said:

I don't know about that and are currently talking to those who sailed bigger ships
When i sailed in spring the small two masted flush decked sloop, the effect of inertia felt negligible. Slight wind change of 5 degrees, or slightly wrong trim on sails, causes immediate noticeable WOOMPTH effect like pushing the brakes in the car. You slowdown and you feel it immediately. Its not stoppage, but speed drops by a good amount. 
 

It has been awhile since I sailed on tall ships but here are a couple of points:  I hope you can take into account the size of the ships. So that a Snow would not have any effect on a 3rd rate for example. In racing when to try to blanket another boats wind the size disparity is not that great. I would agree that when you hit a lull, whether that is caused by another ship, the land or just the wind being lighter, you will feel a noticeable slowing of the ship. That brings up the wind shadow coming off the land which given the tall land masses on some of the islands would have a big effect if you sail to close to the lee of that land mass. If it is coming in for sails you should have it for the land mass effects as well. 

 

[Farrago]

2 hours ago, Swedish Berserker said:

Destroying PVP 

With the whole karma thing? How so? You can still attack everyone but your own nation.

[Sir Texas Sir]

On 7/23/2020 at 6:41 AM, Morgoth said:

Do you want us to spend even more time doing boring PVE and Trade on the PVP server?
 

See this is a problem a lot of players have.  They keep thinking WAR is a PvPonly server.  IT IS NOT.  We have two servers currently.

PEACE:  PvE Only

WAR:  PvE with PvP

See the problem is your looking at the servers all wrong.  Yes you can play on WAR and never do any PVE, but it is not and never has been a PvP only server.   As close to ever having something that was PvP only was NA:L and even that ended up  having bots cause not enough folks would play it they had to fill teams with bots.

On 7/23/2020 at 9:21 AM, Riot stick said:

Kinda stupid when my best ship will be the Vic DLC.

I'm still not really happy how they handle the DLC's cause they should never be better than any crafted in game ship of the same tier.  When you look at some of the other ships  some of them are faster or better than even well crafted season ships.  The issue I think is they keep going from one extreme to the next.  They wanted to make crafting easier so that the PvP guys can do it.  Than they brought DLC's to help with instant ships.  Now it seems they want to make crafting so hard that even the PvE guys don't want to do it (the ones left as many left when they dumbed down crafting and trade).   I'm one of the lucky to have a lot of woods stocked up, but even with the season sheeds it's so slow a proccesss to convert and to expensive for these woods.  As some have said it only helps the rich.

Let be honest if they are going to do this stuff and since they can't do wipes, they need to rest the map and make folks fight back over for stuff.  Than maybe Russia would loose some of there lands and others will have a chance.  They still have done nothing to fix the balance issues of nations which we been demanding for a good while now.  INstead they keep tweeking and changing every thing else.

[Rackham the Red]

On 7/23/2020 at 1:37 PM, admin said:

 

• Battle Flags. 
  • Long overdue flags will be added to the game.

Its all pretty straight forward, but would you please clarify this? Does this mean more flags on DLC Flags, or what?

Thank you.

Rackham the Red

[Paulo de Antigua]

@admin

Dear Admin of the Game Naval Action,

Please do small patch notes of the upcoming updates so we don't get the surprise when we launch the game. Alot of us don't understand the buff in certain things like the navy stucture or navy planking and the nerf in the speeds of the ships. (These are the changes that we have seen personally but maybe there is more that I don't know of yet)

If you could inform your players on the changes you are making and the reasons that goes with it, Alot of us will not be frustrated anymore by the small changes and won't be surprised whether on the negative or postivie sides when we go out in battle.

The experience I had Last Time I was went into battle I had the frustration of my ship going so slow and being not as agile as it was before. But then I looked at the stats and completely understood why it felt like so. I saw the changes but did not know the reasons behind it. this is frustrating to me and alot for alot of players too.

So I'm asking you kindly to just inform you players on the changes in the game that you are making so your captains don't get frustrated.


Kind Regards,


Paulo de Antigua

[Sea Archer]

I would do it in another way.

1. Players of nations that are not originally involved in a battle can only join during the first 2min. This will do away with jumping battles and no kharma is needed.

2. People, who want to craft in enemy ports, should be able to buy permissions  (lasting for a week or month) allowing them to do so (open outpost, craft mats, buld shipyard). 

[Revenant]

The decision to let ships enter harbours, friendly and neutral is overdue! Please no more silly MMOishness! Let us sail our ships as you would back in the day. I advocate a more realist acceleration - deceleration, sophisticated wind and wind force simulation. Nice changes so far, Thank You.

 

S!

 

 

[Smoothie]

Alt owners will be happy with this patch. All alts have positive karma and can do everything, while his main still bitches around. Or vice versa. 

Edited July 27, 2020 by Smoothie

[Lt Sekiro]

On 7/24/2020 at 9:46 PM, Farrago said:

With the whole karma thing? How so? You can still attack everyone but your own nation.

If you join a battle against nation A , you can't help this nation 

 

I help russian vs swedish , i can't help swedish in battle

[van Veen]

Great changes! Looking forward to it. 

The Karma system seems good, simple and effective. Paying money as bribery to increase your Karma is a good idea! However, I'd also add a second way to increase your Karma. 

• Implement a cooldown on negative Karma, e.g. 1 month and then your Karma changes to neutral. 
• Helping other nation A vs. other nation B should decrease Karma to nation B and also increase your Karma to nation A with a certain percentage (e.g. 10%, percentage could scale with BR maybe?). 
• If your Karma is negative you cannot help nation A, but after cooldown you get neutral again and then you can improve your relations with nation A again. Help nation A repetitively to get lucky with flipping neutral Karma to positive. 

[van Veen]

On 7/23/2020 at 12:37 PM, admin said:

In short: players who play defensively will experience gameplay similar to the Peace server.

Could you clarify this, please?

Can players with positive Karma be attacked? 

Are they targeted by HDFs?

[Captain TShirt]

On 7/23/2020 at 5:59 PM, Koltes said:

How about no game mechanic that prevents you to have freedom of choice... like true age of sail mechanic.

Freedom of choice doesn't seem to be impacted here -- what you're advocating is freedom from consequence.

Players in NA have no real mechanism to directly enforce/influence behavior in OW PvP, or national behaviors of NPCs toward players (nor should they be trusted with that power, IMO). A global karma mechanic is a pretty obvious prerequisite for global NPC aggression. Very excited to see us progress toward that.

The alternative to zero consequences (what we have now, and what arguably makes this game thinner and less immersive than it should be), would be to put some sort of OW PvP policy enforcement mechanic in the hands of players -- which brings us back to your EVE example. 

But you're forgetting that EVE also has its own karma system in high sec space, which is policed by NPCs based on bounties and reputations. If you want "low-sec" Naval Action gameplay, just sail in one direction for about 5-10 minutes, and you'll be able to do whatever you want in deep water without consequence. When you get close to a nation's shores, though, the national NPCs should remember when you sunk their traders' brigs for 8 hours straight in your 14-knot connie (oh, sorry -- when you were "PVP"ing). At some point when global NPC aggression/evasion gets flipped on they should try to turn you into a coral reef, or run like hell.

Better to simulate all of these consequences through a relatively tame, reasonable, and consistently enforced neutral game mechanic like the one proposed by @admin. This is a huge step in the right direction.

I hope they continue to flesh this out (per-nation reputation levels, bounties, and positive benefits like shop/trade good discounts, hire-able escort ships, help/protection from other nations' NPCs in OW, special missions, etc.).

Edited July 28, 2020 by Captain TShirt

[Farrago]

4 hours ago, Lt Sekiro said:

If you join a battle against nation A , you can't help this nation 

 

I help russian vs swedish , i can't help swedish in battle

Yes, I understand how it works at least as far as has been revealed by Admin. I was responding to your statement — which without scrolling back — was something like that “it will kill PVP.” It doesn’t necessarily do that. What it will do is you’ll have to decide if you plan to be allied with any other nations. If so, you can’t jump into a battle against them. You can’t attack your allies which just makes sense. If you want no allies and want to pass on the potential benefits having allies might provide, then you’ll have just as much PVP as before.

[DonH]

@admin Will there be a reduction on sailing crew needed under Battle Sails??? imho i think this is the only way battle sails will see some use:

Dead Slow and Battle Sails should use the same number of crew; a bit less crew than Slow, Half and Full sails.

Otherwise we are missing one of the main advantages of it, freeing some crew will let us reload faster or repair better while at close combat or line formation.

[Schnapss]

There are several questions:

Right now if your nation loose a port, you can jump in trader ship and retrieve your cargo and ships locked in this port. With this carma thing you need to reset it. It is an additional burden to defeated side except loosing all buildings.

I do not understand from the description, can a player with good carma be attacked? if yes, what is the point of the whole carma thing? You cannot help even your attacked clan mate and and do not receive personal safety in exchange. Anyone can jump in trader ship and trade across the gulf right now. What is the difference with the carma thing in that case? 

My first thought  was that this mechanic can help people in small nations without ports, but in reality you need buildings only if you want to craft ships and cannons. Cannons can be crafted in any neutral port and there is no reason to craft ships in enemy port if you do not have an access to port bonuses.

So there is only one reason to have good carma - if you create pure trader alt that buy most profitable or most expensive resources in key ports (like gold, silver, muskets and rare wood). It is forcing players to buy additional account or use one of the existing one for trading. Is it the point?

I see only one good idea behind carma thing - quite safe pve for most players. But I do not see how there fit Pirate nation. If they are allowed to join any battle then what is the drawback of being a pirate?

 

[admin]

4 minutes ago, Schnapss said:

. Cannons can be crafted in any neutral port and there is no reason to craft ships in enemy port if you do not have an access to port bonuses.

 

 

Port bonuses will work for neutrals. We are removing the choice from the clan options. If the city is developed (like Austin is a game dev cluster) and i can work in that city - i can use the development of the city to my advantage. So the bonuses will only work for clan allies and All neutrals. Nobody else.

[admin]

On 7/27/2020 at 8:00 PM, van Veen said:

Could you clarify this, please?

Can players with positive Karma be attacked? 

Are they targeted by HDFs?

yes to both
They are PVP neutral not pve neutral. You can sink them and they can defend themselves. But they cannot initiate attack.