Plans for Reputation and Sailing changes

[admin]

41 minutes ago, van stiermarken said:

if so, then the games goes into a wrong direction.

Like Columbus the game will sail on. 
 

 

48 minutes ago, Malcolm3 said:

Basically they don't need to sail. Just set outposts and crafting in Vera Cruz and its vicinity and let your Russian alt do all sailing around.

So to prosper all players will need now 3 accounts - main one for fighting, neutral one for crafting in Russian ports and Russian alt for sailing and trading in Russian waters

Someone has to sail anyway. You need to haul some resources and timber does not grow on trees
Sailing = target. More targets for the brits and swedes.
 

[admin]

3 hours ago, Redman29 said:

 

I take this idea as a personal insult. Having spent countless hours grinding HDF's and sailing chest from point A to point B to invest in a port. And with this proposal, now anyone from any nation with an account that never fights can benefit from my hard work. Yeah, I have an issue with that. 

first this is a discussion topic and it was stated that karma description is not final.
so - pls - careful on the terms . 

 

3 hours ago, Bartas11 said:

I never said something bad, even if dont like the way you Devs change mechanics i dont like, but as redman said.. it is a insult against all of the active Players how move their Asses to build something up and rewarding all those how just whine all day! I hate this Karma shit, for me, it sounds worse for pvp and even more for Clan activitiy and Nation building!
Bartas11 

if you are insulted by the discussions - perhaps you are too thin skinned for this forum. This is not a safe space.

[Malcolm3]

25 minutes ago, admin said:

Someone has to sail anyway. You need to haul some resources and timber does not grow on trees
Sailing = target. More targets for the brits and swedes.

Actually currently Swedes prefer to sink Brits at Belize and SdC, not peaceful Russian traders in the Gulf far away from their bases.
And timber really grow on trees as we build forests to harvest it.

But nethertheless it's understandable - more alts = more money.

[Cathal Brugha]

7 hours ago, Thonys said:

not worth the money -->> or the time or the effort to continue

Good, maybe ports won't be upgraded then, and the devs will remove this stupid port bonus thing as no one will be using it, and small time crafters will be back in business.

[You]

4 hours ago, Malcolm3 said:

And timber really grow on trees as we build forests to harvest it.

Its cool though, imagine if we could do this in real life Grow forests quicker then we can chop them down 😮

[Thonys]

14 hours ago, admin said:

please remember that the karma feature is in design and tech implementation phase and some parts of it might come out slightly differently. 
Our goals are

• give some options of neutrality 
• provide choice persistence - if you chose the enemy you will have to face consequences of this choice (no longer will be able to side with them) which will reduce pressure to abuse the system by for example helping the enemies in battles on interfering with your allies in other ways (unlocking BR difference or other means) 

If during internal testing the goals will not be achieved and generate some parts of the feature will be dropped. 

does this mean that people from the pve server can come to the pvp server and become neutrals

that would be nice indeed 

or is it going to work in a other way ?

ps. i am not a pve server guy so don't know how it really works over there but thats is my first thought on the matter.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Thonys

[Serk]

@admin

Can you confirm if a player will be able to place contracts in foreign towns with a neutral stance?

Cheers,

[Koltes]

17 hours ago, admin said:

please remember that the karma feature is in design and tech implementation phase and some parts of it might come out slightly differently. 
Our goals are

• give some options of neutrality 
• provide choice persistence - if you chose the enemy you will have to face consequences of this choice (no longer will be able to side with them) which will reduce pressure to abuse the system by for example helping the enemies in battles on interfering with your allies in other ways (unlocking BR difference or other means) 

If during internal testing the goals will not be achieved and generate some parts of the feature will be dropped. 

Wait... I dont get it. I thought I did, but this answer made me confused again.
If Spain and GB having a fight.
I entered on Spain side against GB and I get negative karma with GB (I assume this is correct?)

Q1. Will I be able to continue joining sides against GB?
Q2. Does negative karma with GB only prevents me from joining GB side to help them in the future?
 

[GhostOfDorian]

Implementing the right for every neutral player to use all port bonuses of a clan he is not on friendlist, will make port development completely useless.

Redman stated how much efforts it cost REDS to develop Vera Cruz into a 4/4/4/3 port and taking the lead in port development. We spend those hundreds of game hours to get an advantage over our enemies and to keep up on the same level with them, if they would have developped their port faster than we did. We worked hard and spent hundreds of millions reals to perform better.

 

As soon as we get the possibility to craft our ships in hostile ports using alts we keep in a neutral karma, there is no reason anymore to do this grind and to spend more money than our clan earns (REDS is the richest in game). Since we cannot get any advantage over our enemies anymore. Everybody will have the same ships, since everybody can craft them in the best port on the map if he uses one of his alts. And every player who plays in the top ranks has access to such crafting accounts. Otherwise he would not be able to keep up with his competitors already today..

 

Of course REDS will be able to deny random players access to the crafting in VC. No foreign player can enter the port without extreme risk getting sunk by Russians . Also Russian alt accounts of foreign players are not safe, since REDS has enough fully developed fighting accounts in other nations to intercept trading in front of VC of accounts which are not on their friend list. And those accounts cannot offensively fight those hunters under false flag without losing their neutral karma. But those clans and nations who compete with REDS and Russia in RvR and PvP just have to sail their own fighting accounts in front of VC to battle the Russian hunters under false flag.

 

On the long run developing ports doesn’t give those clans  in the lead any advantage against their most important competitors. Grinding ports becomes useless. Since it will be way easier for the top clans to exploit the work of their enemies. And it doesn’t matter if there are no  4/4/4/4 ports in the game, since nobody or everybody will have access to.
 

Helping the honest Dutch merchant who never has hostile thoughts against any player he sees in OW with this new idea is just a fairytail. He will not benefit. He will be another easy prey for the hunters, if he tries to use this new feature. It will be a feature for the best players and clans with the most alts. They don’t have to grind for their advantage anymore, since everybody is equal on this level. Competition in the game for getting the best ships will be destroyed.

 

Everybody who thinks now that VC and Nouvelle Orleans are already highly developped and in service for everybody might find out very soon, that Russian will move their crafting base to St. Johns, since logistic for rare log supply is much easier there than in the far west of the map. That nobody with a lot of time will sail all those logs in the Gulf anyway to keep an advantage over the laizy ones, BF and REDS only have to break up those development steps on a level St. Johns is at the moment.

 

Might be that a race to the lowest developped port starts soon.

Edited August 1, 2020 by GhostOfDorian

[Aquillas]

7 hours ago, Koltes said:

Wait... I dont get it. I thought I did, but this answer made me confused again.
If Spain and GB having a fight.
I entered on Spain side against GB and I get negative karma with GB (I assume this is correct?)

Q1. Will I be able to continue joining sides against GB?
Q2. Does negative karma with GB only prevents me from joining GB side to help them in the future?
 

Answer 1 is yes.

Answer 2 is yes.

The purpose of answer 2 is to prevent people who don't like Brits (in your example) to enter a battle in Brit side, without really fighting, just to fill the BR in Brit side for preventing others Brits to help their mate.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Aquillas

[Farrago]

In the original @admin post, defense seemed to be allowed. Now I’m a bit confused.

What about this scenario: I’m a Pirate. I have positive karma with Sweden. I come upon an open world battle where Swedes have tagged/attacked Pirate. If I join to help defend my fellow Pirate, do I lose my positive karma with Sweden?

[van stiermarken]

On 7/31/2020 at 7:20 PM, admin said:

Like Columbus the game will sail on. 
 

Yeah we all knew what happened with Columbus.
The explorer is blamed for the genocide and exploitation of Indigenous people.
Anyway. As said before. When you need 3(!) Accounts like in the example then the game is on a wrong way.

[Castello Haufniensis]

On 7/31/2020 at 7:30 PM, admin said:

first this is a discussion topic and it was stated that karma description is not final.
so - pls - careful on the terms . 

 

if you are insulted by the discussions - perhaps you are too thin skinned for this forum. This is not a safe space.

Your first post both state that this is INFO about the next patch and you write "discuss". That is a double bind topic starter. Is this info or a discussion? 

My opinion about accounts beeing able to build/craft in harbors, where they have good is as follows (i.e. this is part of a discussion not critque of info):

I would feel like you have made a fool of me for using hours grinding HDF (time I could have used on more funny parts of the game) to upgrade my clans crafting port and then you want to make it possible for ANY alt to craft in it if the ALT stay within certain limits. That means that the hard work I (my clan and 5-7 other clans on our friends list) put into the game is trivially to the benefit of our ig-enmies (and is not even providing me and my clanmates+friends with an economic advantage of beeing able to sell ships from our harbor)

And the fact that the upgrade system has just been implemented (we stopped grinding HDF when this news came....but the the hours spent are fresh in memory) just makes it worse....

My opinion on the subject (as part of the discussion) is that Karma should not give access to building and crafting...

Edited August 2, 2020 by Castello Haufniensis
Excessive use of the word "grinding"

[Busterbloodvessel]

On 7/31/2020 at 6:30 PM, admin said:

if you are insulted by the discussions - perhaps you are too thin skinned for this forum. 

Wiffs of hippo sized hypocrisy me thinks.

Buster (chuckle brother)

 

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by Busterbloodvessel

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

7 hours ago, Castello Haufniensis said:

My opinion on the subject (as part of the discussion) is that Karma should not give access to building and crafting...

Be constructive. What else then should positive Karma give as reward for honorable behavior?

Proposals? I hope we agree that positive Karma needs to offer some benefits over just 'feeling good' and avoiding grievance in tribunals...

Edited August 2, 2020 by Cetric de Cornusiac

[Redman29]

On 7/31/2020 at 1:30 PM, admin said:

first this is a discussion topic and it was stated that karma description is not final.
so - pls - careful on the terms . 

Sorry, I got carried away. 

But the idea of giving people with positive karma access to port bonuses regardless of friends list is a bad idea. 

It is fairly common knowledge I have several alts. With those, I have only ever initiated a tag on 2 of them, the rest are used for crafting and trading. Under this proposal, my crafting alts would be able to craft ships in any crafting port without being in a clan or on the friends list. Furthermore, I could use the Forge Papers to send them to the nation with the best port bonuses. This means for a lot of players who have crafting alts, what then is the purpose in helping your nation upgrade your nations crafting port when you as an individual can simply move your crafters to Russia and craft in Vera Cruz or New Orleans. This will split the national effort in upgrading a port because those with alts see no point in spending the time and effort in doing so when they can craft in another nation and handicap those that can't. 

And it greatly hampers player and clan diplomacy within the nation.

Take for example a tribunal post recently involving my clan in which a British player committed green on green with his Russian alt. When I learned of this (Days before a tribunal post was made) I removed the accounts that had committed the offense from my clan. However, I went a step further and removed the other alts that belonged to these players from my clan that the individuals used for crafting, removing their ability to craft in Vera Cruz. These players are able to craft because of my good will and willingness to help them out, but take advantage of that by creating issues between myself and other Russian clans and they lose that ability. Under the current proposal, these individuals would of had the accounts that committed the offense punished in accordance to the game rules but there is nothing I can do to prevent their other accounts from crafting in Vera Cruz as long as they don't initiate battles with those accounts.

REDS is not the only clan who is helping in the upgrading of Vera Cruz, just as BF is not the only clan who is helping in upgrading New Orleans, just as PURG is not the only clan working in upgrading St. John's. As I pointed out in my other post, ungodly amount of hours and reals goes into upgrading these ports. The mindset being to have the best ships possible with the best port bonuses possible. Why should any of us continue to spend our time and in game money on upgrading a port when anyone with an alt that is never used for combat can use that port to craft there? 

I understand the karma system as a way to remove alt abuse. It also promotes you having to choose which side you fight on (Still think there should be an exception to the Patrol Zone) forcing you to choose if you want to be a friend for this nation or enemy to that one. However, isn't the removal of the friends list for crafting only promoting another form of false flag and alt use? Because I know from my part, under the karma system over 80% my accounts would have positive karma allowing them to craft in any port on the map regardless of port ownership or nation ownership. 

Edited August 2, 2020 by Redman29

[Capitalism Kills]

On 7/31/2020 at 9:47 AM, van Veen said:

I totally understand your frustration. 

I have not fully understood if the friendlist is made obsolete completely or if it remains in place for your co-nationals. 

If it remains in place, it's not that bad. Cause it means that your unwanted co-nationals (foreign alts) still can be excluded by cleaning up your friendlist (you have to trust those clans you have on the list).

Foreign neutral players still have to bring their materials to the crafting ports since it is impossible to make everything in one port. And, since they can be attacked, hunting traders in your home waters might be very profitable. So, crafting in foreign ports is possible, but comes with a huge risk. 

However, if the friendlist has no effect on crafting at all, you'll see an army of alts pouring into Vera Cruz and nothing can be done about it. So basically, everyone will join the winning team (at least with one alt account). 

Excellent and thoughtful analysis and conclusion. I don't exactly see people licking their lips hauling tens of millions into the soon-to-be-well-known most lucrative place to gank. 

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

What if positive karma would be coupled to having ACTIVELY fought for the benefit of a respective nation (for whom your character acted in battle as ally), instead of just not having offended them? We can narrow that down a little more to the condition, player would have to have fought as friendly for that clan of respective nation which owns that port in which he would thereby earn a right to open business... and lose it again if found to join the opposite site, against respective nation.

Means, the starting position would be 'neutral', not 'positive'. Positive would have to be earned.

[van Veen]

On 7/31/2020 at 7:15 PM, admin said:

this
you can do anything but will lose karma. Once you lost reputation you cant do anything positive (help them in battles) with those who you have negative karma with. 

Thanks for clarifying!

[Redman29]

23 minutes ago, Cetric de Cornusiac said:

What if positive karma would be coupled to having ACTIVELY fought for the benefit of a respective nation (for whom your character acted in battle as ally), instead of just not having offended them? We can narrow that down a little more to the condition, player would have to have fought as friendly for that clan of respective nation which owns that port in which he would thereby earn a right to open business... and lose it again if found to join the opposite site, against respective nation.

Means, the starting position would be 'neutral', not 'positive'. Positive would have to be earned.

That would mean making the karma system both nation based and clan based. While it may be possible from a coding perspective, it would be extremely difficult. Also, even if it was possible, you can't tell what a clan someone belongs to until you are already in battle so it would be entirely left to chance that you would join a battle with a clan that owns the port you want access to.

As for the neutral karma, that is easy to get around. Just take the account you want to have use and join a battle on the side of the nation you want access to. Because as it is laid out currently, only thing you have to do to increase your karma is join the side you want good karma with. Nothing currently says you have to do anything once you join. Which is in itself an exploit/alt abuse of the karma system. 

[Despe]

2 hours ago, Redman29 said:

But the idea of giving people with positive karma access to port bonuses regardless of friends list is a bad idea.

it is one of the worst ideas

And totally agree with Redman in his answers

Edited August 2, 2020 by Despe

[Tiedemann]

On 7/30/2020 at 12:11 PM, admin said:

Port bonuses will work for neutrals. We are removing the choice from the clan options. 
So the bonuses will only work for clan allies and All neutrals. Nobody else.

Will all neutral players be able to craft ships with port bonus in ports own by foreign nation clans? With out the clan owning the port being able to control their access to port bonus or benefit anything from neutrals using the investments in their port? If this is the case this is an serious insult to all those players who joined the massive investment grind in their ports!

The clan who owns the port should control if port bonuses are available for neutral or not! And if neutral get access to port bonus then they should pay a significant tax to the clan owning the port, for each ship they craft! We have to get something back from the massive grind/investment we did.

Giving neutrals access to this with out them contributing anything, should really not be on the table for discussion. It is an insult to those of us that invested massive amounts of time and resources in upgrading our ports. 

[Archaos]

2 hours ago, Redman29 said:

Sorry, I got carried away. 

But the idea of giving people with positive karma access to port bonuses regardless of friends list is a bad idea. 

It is fairly common knowledge I have several alts. With those, I have only ever initiated a tag on 2 of them, the rest are used for crafting and trading. Under this proposal, my crafting alts would be able to craft ships in any crafting port without being in a clan or on the friends list. Furthermore, I could use the Forge Papers to send them to the nation with the best port bonuses. This means for a lot of players who have crafting alts, what then is the purpose in helping your nation upgrade your nations crafting port when you as an individual can simply move your crafters to Russia and craft in Vera Cruz or New Orleans. This will split the national effort in upgrading a port because those with alts see no point in spending the time and effort in doing so when they can craft in another nation and handicap those that can't. 

And it greatly hampers player and clan diplomacy within the nation.

Take for example a tribunal post recently involving my clan in which a British player committed green on green with his Russian alt. When I learned of this (Days before a tribunal post was made) I removed the accounts that had committed the offense from my clan. However, I went a step further and removed the other alts that belonged to these players from my clan that the individuals used for crafting, removing their ability to craft in Vera Cruz. These players are able to craft because of my good will and willingness to help them out, but take advantage of that by creating issues between myself and other Russian clans and they lose that ability. Under the current proposal, these individuals would of had the accounts that committed the offense punished in accordance to the game rules but there is nothing I can do to prevent their other accounts from crafting in Vera Cruz as long as they don't initiate battles with those accounts.

REDS is not the only clan who is helping in the upgrading of Vera Cruz, just as BF is not the only clan who is helping in upgrading New Orleans, just as PURG is not the only clan working in upgrading St. John's. As I pointed out in my other post, ungodly amount of hours and reals goes into upgrading these ports. The mindset being to have the best ships possible with the best port bonuses possible. Why should any of us continue to spend our time and in game money on upgrading a port when anyone with an alt that is never used for combat can use that port to craft there? 

I understand the karma system as a way to remove alt abuse. It also promotes you having to choose which side you fight on (Still think there should be an exception to the Patrol Zone) forcing you to choose if you want to be a friend for this nation or enemy to that one. However, isn't the removal of the friends list for crafting only promoting another form of false flag and alt use? Because I know from my part, under the karma system over 80% my accounts would have positive karma allowing them to craft in any port on the map regardless of port ownership or nation ownership. 

Very good analysis, but you fail to mention a huge bonus you get with this system, and that is that if everybody crafts their ships in a single port then it makes that port an even more important hub and that attracts more trade to that port which increases the income that port makes and decreases the income other nations crafting ports make.

As you admit at the moment you are already circumventing the system by allowing known alts from other nations who are your friends into your clan so they can get access to the port bonuses. This gives you a form of control over them and allows you manipulate them with the threat of removal if they do not comply. Is this fair to other people who do not know you or are not on your friends list?

One of the biggest complaints about the friend list crafting system is the ability of the owning clan to remove people at will, even if the people have also contributed to the port development previously. This change at least goes some way to rectifying that.

At the end of the day you always have the option of not developing a port and relying on other peoples work, but I am sure most people will still develop ports. The only difference is the owners of developed ports will lose some control and not be able to manipulate people which I think is a good thing.

[Castello Haufniensis]

4 hours ago, Cetric de Cornusiac said:

Be constructive. What else then should positive Karma give as reward for honorable behavior?

Proposals? I hope we agree that positive Karma needs to offer some benefits over just 'feeling good' and avoiding grievance in tribunals...

Seems like you have a serious case of forum policeitis. Are you some kind of selfproclaimed judge of which opinions  we are allowed to express?

Where does it say that we have to find the positive in an idea even if we think that there are some serious issues with it? 
 

I am sure that the admin+moderators can tell me if I am overstepping any forum rules.

If it is not ok to point out that you think an idea is bad, there is not much point in having a discussion.

You see I am not a lapdog of the admin. I am a paying customer, and the changes proposed actually makes me feel like I have been fooled. And i think it is important for the game to point out that some players might feel fooled by proposed changes. Dont you think so?

[Tiedemann]

25 minutes ago, Archaos said:

Very good analysis, but you fail to mention a huge bonus you get with this system, and that is that if everybody crafts their ships in a single port then it makes that port an even more important hub and that attracts more trade to that port which increases the income that port makes and decreases the income other nations crafting ports make.

As you admit at the moment you are already circumventing the system by allowing known alts from other nations who are your friends into your clan so they can get access to the port bonuses. This gives you a form of control over them and allows you manipulate them with the threat of removal if they do not comply. Is this fair to other people who do not know you or are not on your friends list?

One of the biggest complaints about the friend list crafting system is the ability of the owning clan to remove people at will, even if the people have also contributed to the port development previously. This change at least goes some way to rectifying that.

At the end of the day you always have the option of not developing a port and relying on other peoples work, but I am sure most people will still develop ports. The only difference is the owners of developed ports will lose some control and not be able to manipulate people which I think is a good thing.

The effort that goes into upgrading a port fully is immense. We would not bother to do it if it was open for all (with neutral karma). Then we could just sit on our hands and wait until someone else upgrades their port. And go in with our neutral alt characters there to craft ships. Resources would be gathered the same way and we would use alts in the correct nation to actually sail the stuff to the crafting port. This will give absolutely NOTHING to the clans that owns the port and actually did all the work.

When it is done in a organized way there will be no more PvP opportunities. And as long as extracting/crafting resources, cannons, ships etc. does not contribute to tax for the clan owning the port they  get nothing in return. 

The way I see this is that it is a rip-off and the port bonus feature can just be removed from the game, because it will be accessible to all players who have more than 1 character.