Forthcoming patch final discussion - discussion thread

[Ink]

Captains, please check the latest news about upcoming patch:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/311310/discussions/15/1473095331494744224/

[LaraSmoke]

Some of it Sounds really good but other parts hmmmm. i guess not much we can do other than try it. but for the love of god please stop making silly mistakes and driving your player base away we want it to be busy on the high seas not a max of 300 - 350 player at peck. the marks were a massive mistake you have to see that Right? after wipe 800 to 1400+ then u changed marks making it almost impossible for small nations like the usa to ever gain Victory marks and boom lucky if there was 200 people playing??? see where am coming from ?. if the game is made to hard to achive anything and toooo time consuming people give up if they cant see the light at the end of the tunnle.

[Aussie Pastor]

Quote
* Conquest will remain national - but will be ran by clans
* Clans gain hostility for the nation
* But rights to entry to port battle is decided only by clan who has highest hostility points for that port (only that clan and his allied clans will be able to enter)

I hope you mean Sovereign Nations and Not the Pirate Faction?
Can you please clarify?

Also, can you give us a the Proposed MAP, to be added for discussion?

[Duncan]

Originally posted by AngryScotsman |YOUTUBE|:

Some of it Sounds really good but other parts hmmmm. i guess not much we can do other than try it. but for the love of god please stop making silly mistakes and driving your player base away we want it to be busy on the high seas not a max of 300 - 350 player at peck. the marks were a massive mistake you have to see that Right? after wipe 800 to 1400+ then u changed marks making it almost impossible for small nations like the usa to ever gain Victory marks and boom lucky if there was 200 people playing??? see where am coming from ?. if the game is made to hard to achive anything and toooo time consuming people give up if they cant see the light at the end of the tunnle.

I second the comment, "...for the love of God, please stop making silly mistakes and driving your player base away..."

Regardless of what you do, and I expect you won't use any of the ideas presented below, make the game reflect the historical setting. You keep moving away from that, and you keep making the game worse.

I see nothing in the final proposal that would encourage me to reload the game. Lowering the ship costs, which was promised before the wipe, would be a good step, but the rest is either neutral, or, a complete show stopper (especially the clan war concept).

The further you go from representing the historical basis for your game, the worse it gets. The sad part is, there are solutions to the issues that would make the game more historically correct, for example, you've been trying to limit the number of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rate ships as they were relatively rare. Fine, good point. You're means to limit them has been to cut resources and raise requirements, which also ended up making it harder to make anything. Instead, there's a simple solution (assuming you can code this), and that would be that 1st and 2nd rate ships occupy 4 slots, 3rd and 4th rate ships take 3 slots, 5th rate ships take 2 slots, and 6th and 7th rate ships take 1 slot each. Leave the number of slots at each outpost at 5, now you can have, at most one 1st or 2nd rate ship per outpost, but you can have 2 5th rate ships at each outpost (or one each a 3rd rate and a 5th rate). Simple solution, and logical as large ships take more space. Instead, you did all kinds of things to make it harder to get larger ships, and frustrated a lot of people in the process. Frustrated people eventually leave the game by the way.

Average # of players for the last 30 days, 494; yesterdays peak, 574. At current rate of decline, you'll be out of players in 3 months. My guess is the game will level off at around 200 players on average, wtih peak hitting 350, across all servers combined. Obviously, what you're doing hasn't been working.

Suggestions:
Bring back flags for port battles, keep the regions, regional capitals can't be attacked until all the towns in the region have been captured. until the capital is taken, the towns turn neutral, unless the NATION captures them back. This gives lots of battles, lots of pvp, lots of back and forth so the map only changes slowly, and it makes LOGICAL SENSE!

Clans are NOT nations. You've turned the western hemispher into a giant set of failed states with your clan war idea. Not logical, not historical, not realistic, and I've seen a lot of clans fall apart due to internal stresses, and now you're going to make them act as if they're actual nations? BAD IDEA! You'll just end upwith super clans as the smaller clans fall apart, and have the super clan leaders bossing everyone around (not at first, but that's what I fear the outcome will be over the long term).

You added an idea of war fleets, if a war fleet is attacked all members are pulled into the battle. Cool. big fleet attacks a big fleet, big battle. Good idea. Take it one step further, war fleet attacks a single vessel, the attacking ship and the attacked ship go into battle, the war fleet stays outside, to cover against a rescue force showing up (ends the DAMN GANKING!). If PVP represneted what we typically see in the movies, and books of the period, small random engagements, with fleet battles being rare, would be a HUGE improvement. Now its big guy(s) chasing little guy(s) and all about stealing each others ships. Not representative. Also, would likely make more PVP opportunities as attacked players would have much better odds than they do now, even though they'd still be disadvantaged (in most cases).

The above idea still allows the attacker to have an advantage, just not so overwhelming an advantage. Large fleets attacking a single ship isn't as productive as looking for a similar sized fleet to attack with this idea. May or may not work out, but DEFINITELY better than what exists now.

Last, set victory conditions. Yes, you'll need to reset the map once so many months, maybe 2 or 3 times a year (assuming the port battle idea above works the way it should). Let people keep their crafting, rank and ship experience (or make the grind MUCH MUCH easier so people can play sooner instead of grinding). Guess what, simpler than having to bring out a large patch every few months to pull players back in for a short while, who then leave as they find the game worse than it was before. Also, would give people a chance to try fighting for a different nation without having to make a new character and starting over from scratch, and would allow the game to be dynamic, which means, more interesting by the way.

Regardless of what you do, and I expect you won't use any of the ideas presented above, make the game reflect the historical setting. You keep moving away from that, and you keep making the game worse.

[Duncan]

Oh, since the forum is now down to a fairly small number of people posting, put up a poll and see if there's some way you can make filling it out a requirement to log in the next time. At this point, won't be as valid as you'll only get the players that have stayed (a fraction of the players that have left). So you might want to do that as part of the switch over to unity 5 when you'll get a better representation of all potential players (best would be if you could email a thousand or so players across all players that ever played, that would yeild a very accurate result).

[Hullabaloo]

On the whole I think these conquest changes look promising, especially in that players who have joined a weaker nation will still be able to join a War Corp/Clan and be competitive in the conquest aspect of the game. I like the introduction of these protected areas too, which give new players a chance to establish themselves with less fear of ganking.

Less sure about the ability to teleport to and from neutral ports though. The map will be very small now, players teleporting all over the Caribbean. Easier crafting too? You have already allowed AI capture of 5th-7th rates. I think there is a danger that game is going from hardcore to very easy. Ships should be valuable commodities IMO.

As for historical accuracy, it's nice, but it just doesn't work. Will be good to see a map no longer dominated by Spain and GB. Let the players make the history :)

NB. I have heard that the new Pirate capital is to be Nassau? but this is a shallow water port, if this is the case then I assume there are some map changes?

[gcla3238]

When is the new patch due?

[Nym™]

You have yet to adress the immense time killing factor that is OW sailing. The speed is tooo damned slow for the size of the map, realism be damned. It's keeping players from actually playing the game. Raise the absolute minimum speed to at least 10kn against the wind and at least double the max current speed. Or better yet, ignore the wind completely in OW and give each ship a different top speed. Make traveling not boring and the OW fun.

[Castor]

Originally posted by Nym™:

You have yet to adress the immense time killing factor that is OW sailing. The speed is tooo damned slow for the size of the map, realism be damned. It's keeping players from actually playing the game. Raise the absolute minimum speed to at least 10kn against the wind and at least double the max current speed. Or better yet, ignore the wind completely in OW and give each ship a different top speed. Make traveling not boring and the OW fun.

- Number of trips required for crafting will be drastically reduced
- Trading resources placement will be improved and demand and supply volumes adapted for new system

- All ports will be split into capturable and non-capturable - the amount of ports will represent gameplay difficulty on these original difficulty levels
- Spain easy
- Britain easy

There you have it.
Reduced OW travel times for those who are affected the most (traders/haulers), and with the new land ownership system Spain and Britain will own ports all over the map, many of which will most likely be uncapturable, for people to build outposts in and teleport to at will with ease.

Removing sailing profiles (different performance at different angles to the wind) and speed as the only remaining differentiator would be absolutely horrible, and they already increased OW speed by 20% a few patches ago, do even more and soon we're zooming in motorboats, can spot enemies for 5 seconds before they're already on top of you and tagging, and can't sail channel paths because the ship accelerates like a lamborghini.

[Tweedledumb]

I'm a new player and don't know much, but I'm a bit worried that if you don't make the game interesting for those outside of "super clans" then it will fail.

The game has to be interesting and playable long-term for solo players or it won't sell. For example, how can a single player impact the well-being of their nation, for example?

This game has great potential - just remember the thousands of solo players in MMO's. Clans/Guilds etc... aren't for everyone.

As an example, I have been playing Black Desert Online for 3 months, not in a clan, and enjoy it very much.

[Hullabaloo]

Not being in a large clan (War Corp) will preclude you from taking part in Port Battles (Conquest). That's all. All other aspects of the game: Ship Building, Solo/Small gang PVP, Mission Running, Piracy, Trading etc are open to you as a solo player or small clan.

[Marshal Lannes]

I do not think the game will be playable again until the DEVS turn the clock back to what was more than 1 year ago. It's no good continuing with a failed game. Go back to the time everyone was playing, or at least 1,500 anyway.
I had a total of 15 ships of all types except 1st and 2nd rates because I didn't like 1st and 2nd rates. They were in 5 different ports. I would go out with my clan and do pvp. I would also play solo doing missions and raids. I got to level 50 crafter and was able to build most ships and help the clan.
Now, no one of my clan of 35 has been playing for months and I play World of Warships.
NA is one of those games that's gone dead in the water. To revive it would take a change of mind in the Devs. Admitting a mistake is difficult for anyone.

[Duncan]

As a solo player you will find it very challenging to acquire resources (clans will have a lock due to contracts on many items you will need, with resources being difficult, it will take you longer to build ships, solo missions, you may find yourself being attacked by enemy players that join in the mission, so, as Jean points out, you may do these things, but they will be much harder than otherwise, and if you're also part of a smaller nation, you may find them impossibly difficult. You won't even have the option of being in a port battle though, and no 'national' effect to port battles now anyways, you're just making someones clan stronger.

Compared to what the game was a year ago, last year, was a lot of fun, now, its like going into a chinese buffet restaurant and finding the menu is really for a swedish smorgasbord. You might like the food, but its not what you expected or wanted.

[Gnat Mikakka]

One sided PvP is no fun. Make game mechanics nutral not favoring either side. I.E. invisabiity with speed boost and wind nulification. Closed PvP so that reenforcments can not get to you. Opened PvE missions so the attacker will have the AI on there side.

With mechanics the way they are it favors the ganker and allows for them to get away so they dont have to contend with revenge fleets, but i have to contend with a ganker joining my PvE missions and making it PvP.

Broken boarding mechanic. You loss as soon as the boarding action starts. How do you go from 350 vs 400 crew to insta win for 400 crew after one round.

[Shoeshine]

Wtf? Clans? For real? Clans will dictate who will be able to do port battles? Sounds like fun for those that are in small guilds or the loner trying to get in. Take away the clan-thingy ASAP and move back to nations only, and make any1 able to join a port battle.