Anolytic

I'll give leeway some chance to be balanced. Some ships now feel and look like they're not even touching the water. The keel touches nothing and the water gives no resistance. Naval Action: Tokyo Drift edition. However to be honest my initial impression is gameplay>realism. Gameplay value dropped quite a bit for me. Leeway can be alright in a PvP-chase or in a mission where it's just about drowning everything. But when you are grinding slots on a ship and at the same time looking for those skillbooks that we all need to look for because they are not craftable, so you attack AI fleets, then it is just singularly frustrating when you cannot loot the ships that you sank: Because the AI takes so long to sink you already drifted away from the. Because the AI sailed upwind right before it sank. Because the AI beached themselves - which they always will do if there is a beach of any kind nearby - and if you go after them to loot you will get beached too. And then there's all the times that you finally manouver yourself back upwind to the wreck of a sunken ship, only to realize that the ship has sunk too deep for it to be possible to loot it - even though it doesn't look like it's that deep. A waste of 5 minutes here and another 5 minutes there. I guess I'll start bringing an alt with me in all battles, in a ship that doesn't suffer that much from leeway, so that I can loot more of those rig repairs and basic upgrades that are all I seem to ever get... Simulators are great fun. I'll sink 200 hours of playtime into a good simulator, easily. It's something quite different that gets me to play a game for thousands of hours however.

The idea has been floating around for much more than a year. Was first mentioned back in 2014. I don't know what is the status now though. My guess would be that they won't make a kickstarter till after either or both of NA and Legends are released so that there are (hopefully) more than ~1000 people to potentially contribute to the kickstarter. If only a fraction of the playing population joins the kickstarter, then the current population is a little bit on the low side to even bother.

@Jon Snow lets go Just so you don't accuse us of any improprieties for not screenshotting all our "battles". @sveno Thought you guys were all mad about nations not showing up to their attacks?

Victory marks change was introduced December 22nd. Most of these PBs happened before December 22nd. Are you accusing REDS of being psychic? Also, it is not possible to be allied in the game anymore. Every nation is red to each other. Russia and Spain are enemies in the game. We can grind hostility against each other or attack each other in OW. But we can also choose not to fight. Spain can choose to attack REDS ports and REDS can choose not to defend. Just like Danish BF clan can choose to attack Pirate KIWI clan in OW outside Bahia Escocesa and not fight each other for 1 hour, or RUBLI can attack BF outside Pitt's Town and not fight each other for 1 hour. Are BF and RUBLI/KIWI not friends, can you explain this @qw569?

Eat, drink and be jolly for a couple of days. Merry Christmas from REDS!

RvR is hardcore if you always try to keep up or catch up with the biggest nations, which is what devs is saying that players in other nations should do. Sweden always allied with the biggest nations until all the good clans became inactive and Sweden as the last remaining force became the biggest themselves. You're right it doesn't have to be hardcore. We could all just join Sweden. MARKS clan is recruiting.

Indeed. Forcing everyone into RvR is forcing everyone into something that requires a hardcore playstyle. This game risks loosing every casual player, those who mainly do econ, and anyone who doesn't have time or motivation to sink endless hours into the game. Right now sailing 1st rates around is a blinking star in front of every new player, motivating them to grind and cross all the hurdles that the game presents. Moving all 1st rates into what will seem like the land of impossibility will discourage many players from even trying. And why do I say RvR is a hardcore playstyle? This is only my main, and I have 7 accounts... They say it takes 10 000 hours to become really good at something, and I'm still not any good Last time we tried restricted access to 1st rates I got messages on Steam from multiple people every week regularly asking me if devs had come to their senses and brought Lineships back for normal players yet. Only when I could finally tell them that, yes, Lineships were back, did they start playing again. That was only quite recently. Inb4 1st rates will cost 2 Victory marks.

Also required: 2 hours to find an epic event, 30 minutes to sail your 1st rates there, 90 minutes to finish the epic event, and 30 minutes sailing back.

Yes. The heavy Rattlesnake has no chance against the Mercury.

This is flat out bullshit. There are other nations and other players than swedes that are equally capable at figuring out how to survive the changes, yet are still capable of pointing out the broken mechanics at the same time. Swedish players have been complaining in this topic as much as anyone, and it is too early to let you forget about Sweden's reaction to #servermerge. Russians and Swedes complained equally and pointed out logical flaws in the arguments for the decision, but Russia, France and other nations at the same time chose to work with the situation we got and try to attract other global players to our nations. Future wipes and changes are going to completely change the populations and the complainers may still be proven right, but I have great hope that at least for the time being and for the duration of this server iteration, the timezone game may remain somewhat balanced and that there is always going to be one force in any timezone that will be willing to balance out the sides in order to get a fight and to keep the timezones somewhat balanced. Of course that dream got a shot across the stern when devs threw us this change that basically tells everyone to hurry up and beat on the little guy.

Please, if you won't listen to us, at least listen to yourself from a few months ago: amen

I'm sorry, but this simply is not how you should make RvR important or how any of this works. You are taking the dynamism out of an open sandbox and forcing players into a specific pattern. This is not how you motivate players to RvR, this is how you motivate nations to roflstomp each other and to destroy each others' gameplay in order to preserve their own. However you go about it, if you want to use Victory Marks to motivate RvR, then you need to make sure that enough of them are handed out that those who risk their ships get more than enough of them back to replace the ships that they lost. Otherwise risking ships is discouraged and only those that know already that they have an advantage and a greater chance to win will be willing to risk their ships, again giving them an even bigger advantage and guaranteeing them the win. There is no way of climbing that ladder. And if the loosing teams do not get Victory marks, then once they have risked and lost all of their ships and cannot replace them anymore, they will stop playing. They will have tried and failed and the game punishes them for being brave and take risk, and forces them to stop.

Hat Island PB video:

I can't really choose either option. 1st rates can be rare and hard to make without being exclusive, which is what they are being made into.

It's only been less than 24 hours since this patch, and people are too quick to loose their tits about it, but please take into consideration those reasonable counterarguments that are presented in-between the flow of abuse. Please take into consideration, that this change contradicts, and completely conflicts with, your recent change towards clan-based RvR. You gave clans charge of RvR, by allowing us to decide who is able to get into Port Battles through our clan lists and friendly clans lists. Now you are trying to force everyone into RvR, not just the clans that form around this activity. You have many times said that "ships are content". I wholeheartedly agree. By this change you are handing a significant part of your gameplay - SOLs - over to a niche group of your player-base (clans) as a hostage. I can tell you right now, that hostage has no chance. Not everyone likes being in a clan. Not everyone plays using teamspeak (and you need teamspeak/discord to do RvR). If you cannot get accepted into someone else's clan, you can of course make your own, but not everyone have the time, or skill, to run a clan and run it in a way that it can actually do RvR. I spend more time to help managing my clan than I spend playing the actual game. You @-mentioned me about my thoughts on why Russia gained players. Russia is gaining players because we are active and we have something to promote. We have something to promote to new players because of the successes of our active RvR- and PvP-clans. Talking only about REDS, a key reason for our current activity is that players are not forced to do a lot of stuff that they do not care for. Sure, we all have to pitch in and do boring PvE every time we want to set a Port Battle, but even that can be managed when we have fun on Teamspeak together. But when it comes to other things we have streamlined our clan for maximum fun for our members. Some of our Officers have a ridiculous amount of alts. And by the use of these alts and tight cooperation we are able to gather resources, labour hours and materials so that every ship a member of the clan needs he need only ask for it. Be it for PvE, PvP, or RvR. Just the other day a clan-member needed a ship to join other clan members and go out to PvP. I was able to use my alt to craft a ship for him to his specifications and use my alt to teleport it to where he needed it, and hand it over to him in time for him to catch up with the rest of the group. Some players want to follow the production chain of the ship that they use, from gathering resources to launching and outfitting a finished ship and taking it out for PvE. Others just want to grab a ship and go out in the open world and hunt PvP, or RvR, or even PvE. A well organised clan allows them to do that, and be part of the production chain without having to handle every part of it themselves. With restricted Victory Marks access we will no longer be able to hand our players the ships that they need when they need them. Players won't be able to get into port battles in big ships, because they don't have knowledge slots on their big ships, and they can no longer get knowledge slots on their big ships because if they go out to PvE-grind and they loose their ship to an accident, a disconnect or someone jumping their mission, then we cannot replace those ships anymore. This change will not have that effect. It will have the effect that the strong nations will be afraid to fight each other (loss of valuable ships for no benefit) and rather will race against each other to grab ports from the weak nations. Having top 3 nations get victory marks, also means that there is every possible incentive for the 3 largest nations at any time to not fight each other and rather cooperate about keeping the rest of the nations at bay so that neither of the 3 can loose their spot in the top 3. I think I get your point. Although you cannot force players to do anything except stop playing. If you really want to push people hard towards participation in RvR, what you need to do is give players that participate in any part of RvR, meaning, hostility grinding, screening or inside the actual PB, in connection with any port battle that is actually set and actually happens, should get victory marks. All of them. Regardless if they only did hostility or only joined in the PB. You also need to incentivise people to actually want to risk their ships, so victory marks should be handed out to both the winning side and the loosing side. Equally, or possibly twice as many for the winning side. That way players get back marks to replace the ships that they lost. However even this would only be viable back when RvR was available to all and not clan-controlled like it is now.

@qw569 What's up with Mishka?

I'm just leaving this here: Just in case I happen to not log in for two days between January 1st and January 7th (hey, sometimes I have other stuff to do than gaming), don't interpret my absence as a sign of support for this cause. I partly or completely disagree with most of these points. What the heck kind of PvE is this?

Forcing players is the wrong way to go. You should instead encourage them. With nice paints maybe, or with redeemable chests that contain random (or port specific) resources much like we got for winning port battles in the early days only that we won't have to carry the resources back with us and can just redeem them when getting back into port. This is completely wrong. RvR is not for everyone. Just like trading is not for everyone. We need a dynamic and diverse MMO world where everyone is part of the ecosystem. RvR is competitive end-game content for groups. It is a small niche of the game. RvR is a positive influence on gameplay in as much as it changes the dynamic of the OW. If RvR is the end-all-be-all then we might as well get lobby based PBs. And then the next step is merging Naval Action with Naval Action Legends...

This topic is moving too fast and with too much repetition and empty arguments for me to get an overview and give a concise representation of my opinion on the most recent changes. I will try nevertheless: I realise that you call this an "experimental update", but a lot of people didn't read that part. And regardless, this experiment will change the RvR-game immensely for however long it lasts, and will negatively affect many nations. You are trying to introduce to RvR a ladder system like the one we have for PvP. This is already not a good idea in PvP (don't take my word for it, I am not a good PvP-player, take it from some of the best and most active PvP-players that have written about it on the forum). You are making a ladder system, where once someone has climbed to the top, the ladder is retracted behind them, preventing others from climbing up alongside them. It encourages PvP for the people who already win and already did PvP without encouragement, while it discourages PvP for the rest. The same goes for RvR. The effect that this change will have is not what you expect. The consequences will be: -higher risk, no additional reward. -numbers importance greatly increased -restricting nations strategical options -no gameplay diversity. You either have to do everything in this game (rvr, pvp, trade) or you can do nothing. You say in some posts that not all ports requires 1st rates to fight the PB. But there are not enough shallow ports on the map for everyone to only focus on them, nor is everyone equally interested in shallow PBs. And for all deep water ports 1st rates are a necessary tactical tool. Even if you can do PBs with 2nd rates, even 2400BR ports require access to 1st rates to be able to contest them against all tactical setups that the enemy could bring. The thickness and repair meta has made 1st rates even more superior over 2nd rates than they were before the structure patch.

You are wrong. Timers were first introduced on the 18th. By the time our Americans grinded Hat Island, Russia already had active timers on all of our ports, and most Swedish ports except for a handful of them also had timers.

Hat Island:

Join Russia!

Don't mess with Babushka.

Don't worry. There's free vodka. It restores twice as much crew as rum.