Sir Texas Sir

Maybe it's as @Zlatkowar said it just seems there is less cause they are more spread out. The other thing is a year ago we had way more players on the servers. Is there a way you guys can adjust the AI numbers according to the player count? If we can have up to 2500 players but only average 500 could we add more AI to make up the difference? At least maybe for the PvE guys? Bump there AI numbers up higher?

I still think they should be allowed to capture ports from AI to give them something to do. Just reset the map every 3 months to neutral. Folks can still trade if port owner allowes like on war. And with such low pop I think in both servers AI should be increased and decrease as server poop goes up and down. Now a days it seems like there is way less AI than we had a year or so ago.

They all ready have tons of ports over there folks could capture but no one will do it. Making all the captures le isn’t going to change any thing. I actually thought they’d still had the option in those two nations to pick where to start until I switched my Spanish char to France. I did the same on PVE as I just delete it and start over as I never redeem my xp over there and you have to start at port royal.

What nation are you in other than as Russians? Have you posted to buy them? I know a lot of folks are short on reals not doubloons and have them but won't post them for sale. They should allow us to make contracts to pay with Doubloons. I would happly fill contracts for them if some one put a good price up. You can also just request permits too. I'm sure some one could fill that order for you for certain SOL or the ships them selves?

Next alt I run on the Test bed for these kills I'll do GB and see how it is around the island. I haven't been over in that area in ages in game.

This reminds me of a friend back when I was a kid. He was color blind and was very good at art....that didn't have color. He once did a tank and thought he paint the camouflage on it until I told him his browns where reds and something else was way off. In the future he just stuck to black and white stuff...he use to run lights all the time until I told him you know it's in order, GREEN, YELLOW, RED so there is no excuse about not tell ing the color. Back to the post though, would be nice if there was some darker outline on the cross swords/anchors cause they do blind in to the back drop a bit to easy at times.

There should be a list posted any time they are changed mainly for PBs. I still think groups should list each players BR/with ship they are in and the top of the list should have Total BR for the group. It's a pain we have to use third party info to make PB groups cause we don't have the means in game right now. IT's just a slight bit of code to add that info to the player list of groups. That just getting to complicated and would take a pain to get balanced and well coded. BR's should be set per ship and in stone. Cause as per above we need those numebrs for PB list.

Kinda a twist on this if they actually effected the ports stock. You get a lot folks pissd at you if there is no Copper in a port cause some one keeps sinking all the cooper supply trade ships (or some other resources). If the ship doesn't make it to port it doesn't drop...or drops a small percentage. This would give folks reason to protect certain trade routes.

Actually GB taking Navasse would mean even less AI. You know I got to thinking and I think most our problems are we are for the most part all RA and don't think of the game as a new player. How many of you have actually started over as fresh and made a new char and leveled up? When you start removing all these safe zones and Enemy AI from National waters it makes it even harder for new players to level up. It doesn't really bother us cause we don't have to level up any more. How many of you have all the books? So you don't see the issue about needing to grind to open slots and get books. Many of us have it all. Hell I have it alll on Sir Texas Sir and I have two others chars with almost all the books too. Even if we don't have them most of us just pay some one else that did the grinding for us for them.

Personnely if they are going to take out these zones I think upon wipe all ports should return to nation that Historically owned them. Than allow Players to fill AI flips to defend that port. The clan that brought enought players/BR gets to own that port if they succcessfully defend it. Or the clan that takes it as per normal. It's going to suck having what 300 neutral ports. I also think if they are going to drop these zones they need to just reset the whole map when they do it to properly test this. Sorry if you don't like grinding AI for hotislity than suck it, it's part of the game and doesn't mean you have to flip every port out there. This would mean that only important ports will be flipped for the most part (small clans will still get a pickings of the nuetral ports). But changes like this need to be all or nothing. Not half ass like the last wipe and mergers where. Spain on test I had to go up the Florida coast. You start to catch some good fleets in the keys area and along that coast. I was mainly hunting for 10 6th rate fleets and trade ships to knock off my 25. Pirates I went around to Grand Turck to get them as it seems the Pitt's Atwood area was bare. I'm sure you could get them on the norve side of Hattie. US you just have to go down past all the ports to get them (that is what I'm working on now). I started one Prussian and found it's nice to catch the shallow ships there though for getting trade and such. I'm about half way up the 25 ships on that char just doing shallow ships. Or like it was on Global it was US and GB cause those where the two main nations. I can see Spain and GB but Spain will loose anything they snag for the most part. We mention US should move into the gulf to get away from the coast but we couldn't beat the french that is why we went for the Yucatan area south of Belize to get away but folks had to come and ruin that. Folks get tired of being stuck in a corner being farmed. That is why US is mostly dead now RvR wise cause we got farmed down to the bare players that just stick around to play. Not really enough to make a good RvR force other than in the shallows. I'm sure we will see a good strong clan or two make a trip in there. @admin I would advice if we are going to remove these zones than can we bring back a few of the free towns that was in those areas so they are not spread out so far and folks can have staging areas to fight from maybe?

If I was to change AI one thing I would change is the pull for board. Make it so AI treats every one as if they have DD perk. AI can only pull you if they have more crew than you. Your screwed any way cause of all the boarding mods they have. This is where most people get killed, they go to loot the ship and get pulled at the last moment while the AI is sinking. With that why does AI not have all it's crew in survival trying to bail out all the water? Seems AI stays afloat and continues shooting all broad side like nothing and has 100% prep when pulled for a board. I get AI needs to be a little tougher than players, but some times it does things that just totally crush a new player that isn't ready and the number one thing is normally the auto pull and board while sinking. I really do n't see folks asking for stuff to be dumbed down, but you have to remember not every one plays the same as you. Many folks in this game are older and tend to want a more relaxed play of the game than hard core all the time. That is why casuals want to be able to grind AI without fear of being farmed by so called PvP Elite that refuse to fight each other, but think ganking casuals at capitals is real PvP and fun. That is the wonderfull thing about open box games like this, it has all types of players in it. Well when it has a population..... You will always have your hard core elite players that will do things faster and better than the average player, but you should never balance the normal game towards those players. The Division did that shortly after it came out and it made it to hard for most of the casuals and most folks stopped playing (that and all the hackers didn't help). They learned from that mistake, you want to make a game harder for those, you make tiers/levels or add in new bosses that are harder than the others. We have a group of folks that hate on AI cause they are stupid. I have come to find most AI aren't any better or worse than the majority of the casual players (this is from fighthing US as a pirate, we had AI give us a better challenge at times.) I don't get how folks think killing bad players is a challenge either than just killing AI. It's more the emotional thing of thining I took something away from another player so I'm better. It's also a dick of a move too only fight crappy players and avoid the good players. Which sadly most of our PvPers do. I bring it up all the time. If they would go attack WO, HAVOC, etc etc in there times or the weekends they will get tons of PvP and play, but they don't want that, they want easy kills. So folks have to understand there are two types of players (well prob 100 types) the casuals 90% and the Hard core 10%. You need both to make a game work, but which group is going to fill your servers with the most numbers?

Than do what I suggested above, no DOUBLOONS in green zones missions or AI. DOn't remove the zone, fix the stupid loot tables. That sounds like a better solution. Hell I made a killing the other day with an alt doing those delivery missions even if the doubloons aren't that high there are so many ways to make doubloons why do you care? It's not effecting your game, it sounds more like your throwing a little fit cause other folks are enjoying there part of the game they like. I don't know any other MMO's that force folks out into PvP, in fact the mass majority of them have very limited PvP zones you can play in. The attempts in the past to push these casual players out has not work and won't work. So to get yoru way you would prefer to loose more and more players? Is that what I"m getting? It is a big loos when they make up the majority of the active players.

Test bed seems to have very few AI ships too. You have to sail way over in other parts of the map to find stuff for most of the nations. I been going through my alts and starting them in different nations for this 25 kills and found it's hard to find ships in some areas away from capitals even.

Let them farm, why does it bother you so much what others do with the game they bought? Not every one wants to PvP 24/7. Some folks actually enjoy doing some AI missions and such and maybe getting into some PvP once in a while. You want PvP go flip HAVOC port, flip WO (oh yah forgot ya'll have some stupid rule on that one). You know just as well as I do that if you go flip one of the other clans that are very active in PvP you will get a battle, but most of ya'll refuse to fight them but instead all you want to do is gank cassual players and newbs that suck at the game compared to folks that spend all there time doing nothing but PvP. Removing these zones is not going to do anthing but spread the dead server out even more cause now folks will flip those ports and will be spread all over the please. I swear every time we get close to having a half decent game the devs start going back to hard core extrem and we loose more and more players. you need the 90% of the player base that is casuals to support the 10% hard core PvP players.

How about this if we are going to do this, can we just wipe the whole map and make it all start over? I mean what the point of all these old ports any way? Should make them all historically owned by the nation that owned them. If some one wins a port battle than they get to keep it as their clan port (instead of AI shows up say VCO shows up and defends a pirate port, they own that port from that point on).

Pirates shouldn't even have a capital, they should be following the same rules the three nations that shouldn't be in game. Though what they could do is make that zone a neutral that all nations can use but have the Pirates, Poland, Prussia, Russians all start there. You know this is going to kill what little casual players you have left...... Taking away safe zones is not going to encourage folks to play and come out and PvE. Folks like to have zones they can grind up without having to look over there backs every two seconds for gank squads. I'm going to predict this is going to kill what numbers we have left. You would be better off killing the PvE server and making the Golf of Mexican a PvE zones. that would get more players on one server insetaed of them being spread out all over the place. We keep talking about how to keep the new players and casuals and than you do this crap which will just run them off. You can't force folks to play a play style they don't want to play. By taking away the three largest nations safe zones it's just going to make more players leave and not log in. Oh look now we will have even more empty ports folks will own and no one will fight over........

You get fleet 1 for free, that is only if you want 2nd and 3rd fleet ships. They really didn't change in cost. That what you had to pay for them before.

Yah I wanted to test this out by the way cause how do you get paid for the delivery if you don't have the mission?

Please let this one run up to the weekends end if you gather the data you need before than. I know a lot of folks that didn't get to test things last week cause of work and was going to log on the weekend. Now to remember where I was on my kills list.....I'm sure I"m some where close to 25 lol

I remeber many a moons ago Hartz (UWS/SOL) was all pissed in global chat at WarlordSquid and put out a 1 million dollar bounty. Within 10 mins I had sunk him in battle with it recorded and screen shot, "FRIENDLY FIRE OK, GREEN ON GREEN ALLOWED." We had Warlord coming out of Tumbado in store bought ships letting folks sink him to collect on the bounty as Hartz said, "I'll pay any one that sinks him......" Not to the first person. We where trying to get his debt way up there above what he could pay by having folks collect on it. So yah it could very easly be abused by like you said getting a friend to sink and collect. Now what I would love to see is a reputation system where you get a boost to xp/gold for sinking some one with a bad reputation vs your nation. Some one that sinks mainly Spanish ships will give a boost to any Spanish player that sinks them. Basically the more hated you become with one nation or other the better rewards they get for sinking that player. Though it also effects the use of those ports, high enough bad reputation you can't even use the port when it's open to all for trade.

You get a week for the letters and 3 days for the person and it’s in game time. Weight was pretty much nothing. I was picking them as I traveled around on my alt as I was doing my kills on the main. You have to watch the target distance and location for some of the, but I was able to have multi running at the same time.

As admin stated every thing should be wiped cause of testing and changes. We are promised Rank and crafting level and ship knowledge. Books need to be relearned cause of changed loot and loot drop. Though I hope they become better means to get some of the more rare ones (like actual missions for them). if you don’t want your rank at start after release than just don’t redeem them.

I said this before. The 9 ships should have the 9 chest as normal. The epic gold chest should be redeemed not on one of the ships. So that if you sink 6-9 ships no matter what every one even though that sunk gets a reward chest for doing the missions. No one wants to risk a very expensive ship for crappy rewards and unfair split of rewards. You get 9 chest you have to split between 6 players....that isn't exactly fair and can cause some shady greedy actions too.

This morning had a couple guys ask where testbed go since they had to work and family stuff couldn't test on the weekday. @admin what would it have hurt to leave the test bed up over the weekend? I know ya'll do you changes on an internal server so it's not like that one has to be brought down and updated for the changes? To get proper feed back from casuals and none hardcore vets you really need to run these a bit longer. They might catch things we don't see cause we are so use to them or they are features we don't use. Just putting in my two cents. Not to mention I was going to run my other alts through the 25 kills to test things but I"m limited to weekends mostly....some of us actually work 12 hour shifts and get little time during the week. Lucky or should I say not so lucky I had this weekend off and was planing to do my hunting......nope no chance of that.

Ya'll should of left it open until Sunday night or something. I know a lot of folks that don't play much during the week and only have the weekends. Giving you better feed back of the player base. Right now it's mainly seems you just open it for the hard core and elitist to jump in mid week.