jodgi

Threat to a competitive environment as in "A threat to democracy" or "threat to national security". Gold ships making it much easier to win over equal skilled players in green, blue or even purple ships is a very bad thing in my opinion.

And that is a threat to my idea of a competitive environment. Completely agree. Name one factor that restricts PvP more than fear of loss ( ≈ fear of being forced into PvE grind). I crafted from day one. I correctly predicted that the best ships and equipment would never be easily obtainable on the market. I'm pointing out that the inherent problem with eco as a prerequisite for PvP has been pronounced since the days when we had thousands of concurrent players. Exactly. I'm not here to pick a fight. I'm willing to test 1 dura or whatever. If it works and all players are enabled to PvP in competitive ships I'll be happy and not miffed that I was wrong.

Combat... potency derived from wood, build choices, armament, upgrades and officer perks would influence all kinds of ship fighting. A simple and "scientific" way of testing this would be to look at two equal ships and then change one factor at a time to see the effect on that ship's ability to win a fight. Example: We found out early on that not bringing boarding mods to a duel was a tremendous disadvantage, and that golden boarding modded ships murdered lower quality boarding mods. Reload, protection, turning and stiffness (chuckle) mods aren't required to stay competitive in the same way speed and boarding mods are. Does that answer your question?

The trick is to have different quality ships be competitive. With upgrades like we have now, and especially if the quality of a ship limits the quality of upgrades, low quality ships will be far, far from competitive. I want what you want, though (I guess?): Even casuals should be able to beat powergrinders if they have skill. To spend time having fun gameplay (PvP ship pew-pew) you have to spend time with boring gameplay (eco, trading, crafting, PvE grinding...). Fake feature. We've done this a long time and we've seen that people want the best stuff within a reasonable time or they won't PvP or play at all. Anything below golden quality is viewed as shit and is sold or broken up. This is not an opinion, it is how we are whether we like it or not. Personally, the only limit I will accept due to lack of play time or unwillingness to engage in boring gameplay is being unable to buy, craft or crew big ships. fox2run has done quite a bit of shitposting to get his point across, but he is right on the money. Enable the thousands of potential PvP-heads out there and you have a server full of life. If we had as many eco fans as PvP fans we wouldn't be having this discussion. 1/10 of the players truly enjoy eco stuff as much as fighting yet eco stuff is currently a prerequisite for PvP. The math does not add up even if the numbers are pulled out of my ass. You want people to want lower quality ships or upgrades, yet they don't want. You want them to believe lower quality upgrades are competitive with top upgrades, yet they don't believe, they've experienced the opposite.

Overall the 1 dura idea is ok, parts of it is really cool. My perspective is nothing beats (close to fair/even) PvP, nothing else is holy to me whether it is eco, trading, crafting, duras and yes, even RvR. So my input may be disregarded depending on your own preferences. So real and meaningful it cools down PvP, that is the fear and the reason we have duras. Your statement makes sense but in this case the balance between logic, sense and fun (willingness to fight) is a delicate one. For my part I don't need someone to lose something to make a victory mean something to me. I care a lot about that. I want people to stay here and fight me. This would be fantastic! I ground to lvl 50 right away because "I had to" but I get no joy or entertainment from it. Crafting and eco does give some context to the game but isn't worth it for me if it makes people avoid fighting. Agree! I strongly dislike WoW type special things that actually mean something in a fight. Because EVE is such a great example of a PvP game, right? I will cry my heart out if we get the same PvE/PvP ratio as EVE. I'm extremely sceptical about the whole "what you can afford to lose" principle, I view it as a cool sounding euphemism for quitting players and lack of PvP hell. Insurance sounds good. People not having to worry about grinding to replace lost stuff is a good thing. Tax on fun is an utterly terrible thing. I can find no positives about it based on my motivation to play any game. I'm not opposed to testing 1 dura gameplay. If it, contrary to my beliefs, works for this game (+fun) then anything goes. Though, I'd rather go with anything you've ground up to you get to keep and use forever. The only thing I want to worry about is a repair bill I'm easily able to pay for with PvP exclusive gameplay. I'm aware this has deep reaching consequences for eco so I only keep it as a secret dream.

@koltes, what is it this would achieve, what is your goal?

For our part it's the upgrades that has consumed the most eco "gameplay" hours. Gold in the old days and now silver and notes, that is the most limited resource. Just so you know where I'm at: I care nothing for the eco bit. I want to pew-pew ships as much as I can with as little downtime as possible.

Very interesting. But as you can see from other comments there are some immediate issues. Notice that those issues are rooted in the economy. The struggle between a meaningful economy and fun PVP is so difficult I'm having a hard time detaching myself and laughing it off. I wouldn't bitch and moan if we were to try a full-on 1 dura system. At least then we would know if it works for NA or makes it into a PVE grind-machine like EVE.

Not yet. Hang in there!

Updated OP with link to new chart.

hello kittying Doran!

lol, 64 posts in this topic and 32 "this will fix the game" opinions, all going in different directions. I bet most of you won't even like the "fix" needed to maintain higher online numbers.

Doran is still around. Rumour has it he is slowly preparing a new version of the treatise updated for changes in the game. Having the weather gauge is simply being upwind of your opponent.

"There, there, tomi... there, there..."

Ah, that will help with image intensive posts.

You're right. When I had it up in a narrow window it looked like mobile version with a few bits and pieces missing. Then I maxed the window and everything came back on the fly. Sidenote: The only thing I truly miss is the ability to type "raw" (BBcode?) posts without any fancy stuff. This is helped by the ability to mark text and use "quote" pop-up, but still.

Opening the forum on my chromebook I'm stuck in mobile version. I can't find link anywhere to go to desktop version. Can I put something behind the URL to get to the desktop version? Or something?

This offends me. The hunting and fighting in Naval Action truly is among the best three games Ḯ've seen in my life. It is very interesting because there isn't only one single way of winning a fight. It is more skill based than team based arena games, so there is even a reason for guys like me to keep the OW, imagine that! I'd play arena Naval Action but I'm staying right here. Sigh, EVE. A GREAT game with a GREAT economy and a GREAT many players... Who mostly do PVE, what is it 80%, 90% or 95% of the server activity? T_T

This is another matter entirely. I propose that more than half of the running is players reacting to the loss mechanic. Any game that tries to be like this is making a very risky bet. That's why I wrote "anecdote", I was only referring to those 7 I know personally. Eco is easy-peasy, always was, but the boredom and time consumption has been dialed back a bit. This is a valid point, I understand how that makes the game fun for some. It means little to me, personally, but that is not important - We're just different. <Looks at how many battles in WoT I have....> What's wrong with me? Aw, now you're just making things up!

That may be true. If I squint my eyes, forget myself, drink five pints and do a ballerina spin I can agree that there is a little fun in the whole getting mats thing. At the very least I recognize that it gives some atmosphere and immersion to the game. I totally see that some of you love that stuff to bits, so I've been tolerant to the inherent boredom of it, for your sake. You're welcome. As far as what makes a guy like myself want to fire up Naval Action.exe, eco stuff is not an important motivational factor. It is in fact a tiny negative, but I'll keep that to myself. I could be wrong, but based on the topics and levels of whinage on the forum over the last year I'm afraid the majority are "shooting at ships" oriented players. Now, look at your quote at the top. People don't mind spending more time shooting at ships, it is what they came for, it is what is fun. Make crafting and eco stuff "complex" and "challenging", which simply translates into time consuming for those who mainly came for the shooting, and the bitching and moaning will have no end. Anectode: I've done quite a bit of Naval Action promotion on other sites and among friends. It may be that all my friends are similar PVP-airheads like myself but out of the seven players that I know started playing due to my efforts none remain today. They're not mad, they even say they like the game, but the time consumption of all things eco has eroded them away. I made them golden ships for free but that can only ever be a temporary bandaid. And now, the all-caps provocative one-liner that is my opinion and TLDR; ECO ORIENTED PLAYERS NEED PVP AIRHEADS MORE THAN PVP AIRHEADS NEED ECO ORIENTED PLAYERS. (subscript: For your eco sandbox to ever stand a chance you need to accomodate the PVP airhead instead of chasing him away, he is the true content provider and consumer of your eco) This seems to be the idea of the developers, will you fight them over it?

You like the eco and sandbox stuff, right? How does 43000 bermuda logs thrown into Flatts shop at the end of 9.96 fall within the "actually worked" definition? Maybe not "player dissatisfaction" but crafters simply stopped making stuff until they had fine logs and could get back to making their idea of an optimal build ship.

I like. People will simply stop waiting for battle screen cherrypicking and everyone is forced to do their own OW hunting and intercepting. The "I wanna help my friends and don't like closed instanced" crowd will object but they object now and will continue unless we completely break solo and small group OW hunting.

I never had Cecilia. I don't have Strong hull L'Ocean. I don't have a single paintjob. I have only one golden non-craftable upgrade. There are so may things in this game I want that I don't have.

^

absolutely! ____________ @sruPL: I'd much rather