Please give your feedback!

[ArenMook]

Ahoy, Captains!

Windward has been out on Steam Early Access for 3 months now and in that time a great amount of changes have been made, as you can see by visiting the Google Doc[docs.google.com] -- and at the time of this writing there are 24 pages of patch notes! You can also find a video explaining how easy it is to create a mod in Windward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC4GiD67SpA
Nonetheless, long patch notes and modding support aside, the game is still under development and will continue to be added to even after its 1.0 release. Which brings me to the topic of player feedback -- without all of your feedback over the course of these months Windward would not be the game it is today, so please continue to voice your opinions on what you like, what you dislike, and what you wish would be different.

More importantly still, I want your honest opinion -- how ready do you think this game is for release? Is it worth the price point? Does it offer enough gameplay? Is it in a state that you would tell your friends about it? And if not, what do you believe would be holding the game back from achieving its best potential?

Please voice your opinion, but keep in mind that setting the release date won't mean "it's done, moving on", but more of "hello world, check out this game!". We all need more victims teammates in PvP, right? :)

If there is anything the game really lacks right now is better exposure to the public, and setting the release date would be one way to help, but I won't do it if the community believes it's too early.

See you on the high seas,
-Aren Mook

[raven_silverblood]

Right now I would recommend the game to friends. I've done so at work. But for 19.99$, I recommend they want until they wait until it's on sale. If it were available for 14.99$ I'd tell my friends it's a steal.

But that depends on the mods. Adding mod support doesn't automatically add any value to a game - it all depends on what mods are made, how enthusiastic and involved the community is, etc.

Also, while the game is fun and enjoyable, it seems a little bit simplistic. It really is more of a PvP type game. Single player isn't nearly as enjoyable as it should be. It's kind of monotonous in single player, with no real progression other than accumulating items, gaining levels and buying new ships. I'd like to see something more than just the same "rinse and repeat" quests. The gameplay also feels kind of boring at time, with the AI using very similar and predictable strategies. Some more randomness and different kind of AI "strategy personalities" would be a nice addition.

[axios2006]

Buyed on first day avaible on Steam, played quite everyday.

The continuos patching process added and still add new gameplay and balance.

One of the best update ever was the patch wich introduced the damage and challenge sliders.

The price? IMHO it's ok: played over 100+ hours, less than 19 cent/hour. I'm very happy, easy to learn, hard to master. You could play for 5 minutes or for entire hours.

About gameplay: maybe more random events will be interesting... the already in to do list, rogue governor, random "mini pirate raids" not triggered by quests, random treasures quests like the sealed letter quest but availble from city quests menu (very rare), multi stage trade missions (like level up 3 cities, trade 10 iron.... ), escort a galleon from city x to y and spawn 0-4 random pirates, random events like plaugues which level down cities, medicine transports, starvation which bring up the prices of foods....

The ability to sell wood, powder, stone (still a bit unrealistic that a ship can have 2000+ logs on board) or you can made an hardocore game mode: limited resouces on board, food for crew, morale, montly wage and so on.

Also more weather events: rain, fog, storms, .... (maybe activate it only on hardcore mode)....

However there is already enough gameplay: I suggested to all my steam and non steam friends: "Buy it immediately. :)" and one of them already purchased it.

About release: probably you could release it... For me, nevermind. I don't see differencies: when I buy a game, I check the playabilty (if it's on early access), the gameplay and the frequency of the updates and if the developers are are worthy of trust.

Example: Prison Architect is in alpha state by 28 months: one update each month, perfectly playable it not seems an alpha... Also Kerbal Space Program, Space Engineers...
However there are gamers who not purchase games if they not read "released"....

Thanks for developing this wonderful game! :)

[=Skleebz=]

I like the game as it is right now, but could use improvements.

1) more PvE stuff.
- Would be better if there were more opposing factions besides pirates, and maybe mroe dynamic enemies, such as them attacking you, or faction armadas that sail through their seas destroying anything that invades.
- More ships on the battlefield. I feel like i'm overwhelmed everytime I step into a new map, and it usually plays out the same, if it is possible, (without lagging a lot) I think there should be more ships per faction besides just a 5v5. I think you should be able to buy ships at ports but to follow your commands. I know you can bribe, but the fleet you buy at ports would follow you to every different level you go to, unless you give orders otherwise. You could commands as simple as...
a) Explore terra incognita
b) Raid ports
c) Defend ports
d) Attack enemies
Also, if you think it would be to op for one to have their own fleet. You could set it to like, 5 minutes to make 1 ship, and only the ability to build 1 ship at each port at a time.
2) more players...
- This game seriously lacks a player base, which is sad, because it is a great game, I read somewhere that the only marketing here is mouth-to-mouth.
Which is fine through early access, but I think it would be wise to (and possibly see if valve will help you through steam) advertise this game when it comes out of early access.
3) Less repetitiveness.
- I don't know what other players think, but the game feels a little repetitive. For me it's just
a) Take ports
b) watch the pirates take them back
c) repeat until you beat them back.
I really don't have to many ideas as how to fix this besides maybe random events (maybe the kraken appears or a leviathan and wrecks ♥♥♥♥ ;)
Also another event being weather, which would really just help atmosphere, it wouldn't really effect gameplay too much unless it's a meteor shower or tsunami.
Also another idea would be to (and I think i've mentioned this before) make factions that actually do stuff (in PvE). It would be good to have the AI factions actually do stuff. It just seems off to have 3 factions/statues and 1 faction with one ship that actually does anything worth a damn.

Anyway, that's all I can think of atm, besides that, great job so far!!

[MobySlick]

Really enjoying the game so far, thanks for your efforts to bring us this fine entertainment! Here are a couple minor points to think about.
- When I arrive at a town with a full cargo, and they have a resource that I want to buy for another town, I can't buy that resource until I clear some cargo space. But if I do that by selling and the town levels, the thing I want to buy may poof. E.g., ship full of Rice, I want to buy that Silk, but if I sell a Rice to make room the town levels and there's suddenly no more Silk.
- Kill rating resets between sessions. Not sure why. Also, since you max kill rating at 6 kills it kind of becomes meaningless after that. You could make skull into a whole new tier, and make it so you need 10 more kills to go from 1 to 2 skulls. Then after skulls have whatever else for 50 kills per tick, ad nauseum. But in that case having kill rating persist between sessions would be nice.
- Any ship you hire does not persist either. It's cheap enough to hire another but I'm just wondering why we need to hire a new one every session.
- In the same vein as that one, an ability to release your hired helper would be good.
- In some places where two land masses are very close and create a kind of shallow water between them, I can sail through but my follower won't follow that way, instead they double back and go around the landmass if they can to rejoin you. They should be able to sail anywhere I can, as I don't think draft has been implemented in this game.

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

[ArenMook]

You can send your hired help away by right-clicking something on the map and telling your followers to go there.

All help you hire is only there for your session. It's not permanent as it's meant to be temporary. Same with stars above your name. They actually go up to 10 behind the scenes, at which point you get the maximum bonus to crit (10% I think it was). Fast travel and leaving the game wipes them, intentionally so. Sailing into another region regularly keeps them.

[Misha]

The game is an awesome game and the trading works very well, only problem with it is that the trading is session based and same goes for quest. A few "special" items to trade that may only be obtain in a few ports. Quest that sends you to an other session, kinda like the "Install a new governor" quest from Sid Meier's pirates, some with a boat to escort and some with the governor just as an item in the ships storage space. Also so "wars" would be nice, I mean like after some time a faction might declare war to get a session back and they will send a fleet to take it back.

Some more life on the map would be nice also, some small ship that just sails around and do trading so the world seems more alive and when the player plays as a pirate those small boats makes good starting targets.

Maybe also some more faction based skills would be a good idea, not something that makes them really strong but like a 2-4-6% trading boost for yellow (can't remember there name) so first skill points gives 2% boost, next is 4% boost and last is 6% boost.
Also some faction based quest which maybe will help build up cities or there fleet, could be like train a captain from level 0 to level 3. With that it would be nice if the gear you used leveled up and that way got a little stat boost, nothing big just like maybe + 1 or 2 to a stat the player choose.

A "most wanted" list over pirate captains who sails the sea, almost like the top 10 pirates from sid meiers pirates but make it so that the pirate captains will attack factions and there by increase the reward on them. Each faction will pay a different reward, if the pirate attacked red a lot red will pay you more to go to them and say that you have killed the pirate then blue will because the pirate din't do any aching to them.

Maybe add some reef and then add some quest to get the shipment from the ship which hit the reef.
Some co-op/mulity player quest.

Thats just some of what i think about the game so far, super fun game but lack some more players, sadly.

[fidomuh]

I recommended the game to a few friends and one of them bought it.
First off, we couldn't get the multiplayer to work, so the feedback I have is more from a singleplayer perspective.

In terms of progress, I thought it would be really cool if, once I've taken over a few zones, I could become governor (or similar) and have an impact on what is grown in each city and what the general state of military ships (faction spawns) patrol, etc.

So if I have 3 zones, it would be really cool, if I could order them all to send reinforcements to the 3rd one, so I can keep it/hire more ships to go raid in the 4th zone.

I'd also really love the dedicated server to run on linux, though I've seen some comments about it working in mono or so. Then I can host it next to all the other random game servers I host :)

A server browser would be great.

Since you can hire ships already, hiring trading ships could be a really fun way to expand a bit on gameplay. Hiring a ship in a harbor where something needs to be transported to a faraway region, but having to pay for it and then escort it, for instance. The trade ships could then have 10 cargo slots, or w/e.. Though I see that it would require some re-inventing of the general trade system as most cities only have very few things to trade :)

[Misha]

@fidomuh

There is a server browser in the game?
Well there is a server list and with like 5-10 servers so far the list seems just fine or do you mean like a browser were you can look for servers that aren't empty, aren't password on and so on?

[dagon]

I bought game at Steam Sale, because 20 euros for early access was too much imho.
I wouldn`t recommend game right now, unless I know this person loves this climate/setting of the game and that would overcome repetiveness of quests, lack of plot/story/clear defined goal in game (in SP), few things need polish/more depth, like trading system. Game is fun right now, but imho its because main mechanics are solid and fun to interact with - but that doesn`t mean game is ready to be called "done"/"released". Also, I would wait till modding starts trembling this scene, we need some good mods that will be as or more fun than base game. I get distant feeling of Port Royale/Sid Pirates/Tortuga: Age of Piracy already and thats a good thing, but basing on your great support with comunnity and modding potential I see Windward as title that can be more than those titles even combined.

tl;dr For now I would just try advertise game to people that looking for that type of game and stay in early access till game gets more polish.
Please continue doing great work and wait some time.

[DragonIV]

I'm pretty happy with the game--there are a few controller annoyances that the developer has been happy to chat with me about, and the map creation needs some tweaking to avoid inaccessible areas that still spawn pirate quest ships, or maps that only take up 1/3 of the screen because land covers the entire map top to bottom (or left to right).

Based on the fact that it appears to be more of a combat game than anything else, I don't know that I'd want to see a lot going into building a story or quest line into this beyond what's here already. The goods trade could be opened up a bit more--it's 50/50 whether one can fill a ship with cargo / mission stuff all to the same place with only 3 cargo slots. Even so, it really doesn't take that long to upgrade, especially once you start attacking pirate regions and capturing them. That is by far and away my favorite part of the game, and the cash/rank rewards for those operations are spot on.

Would I recommend it to folks? Yes, even in its current form. I've easily put 20 hours into this game already. Is this price right? I think $15 would be a decent price point--maybe even $20, but no higher. A limited time demo would be very helpful--I think people do have to get a feel for the game to fall in love with it.

[Hafenzoll]

I ... bought game at Steam Sale, because 20 euros for early access was too much imho. ...

Then go and identify your game where has it pay2win for all the devalue currencies at the moment. It have as least five of them - Pirate RPGs - where you may melt down a lot from your pin money and pocket money.

Dagon: you are now with nearby 206 games in your account. And you want to tell us it was too much to pay for it? So, the remaining 205 are almost free of charge. How about the recent winter sale? Available for 13,99€?

Please remind: He is a single developer (!) and try to fullfill everything to our best. Even if he waste his past time for us all. And do never ever forget: He is quit open-minded.


PS: Don't see the above sentences written in a offensive way.

[robin]

It's utterly idiotic to attack someone, who said that the price is too high, on the amount of games he has on steam.

[ArenMook]

It's ok guys, play nice :P everyone's opinion counts.

Keep in mind that EU countries are asked to pay more for games by Steam, and many of those countries aren't exactly swelling with money. I'm talking about monthly income of like $500. Dagon's opinion is quite valid.

[Hafenzoll]

Originally posted by ArenMook:

It's ok guys, play nice :P everyone's opinion counts.

Keep in mind that EU countries are asked to pay more for games by Steam, and many of those countries aren't exactly swelling with money. I'm talking about monthly income of like $500. Dagon's opinion is quite valid.

Sorry, that I have to intervene again.
Read the article about all the well known companies in Europe: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/editorial-on-tax-problems-of-eu-commission-president-juncker-a-1002075.html

It's not about the year 2014, as well as for 2015 and it's future.
Why has Steam established a branch in Luxembourg?

Not sure how the US-citizens and the Canadians know about this.

[DragonIV]

Methinks you posted the wrong url.