Anolytic

I wholeheartedly agree. Navigation used to be an art and some players were better at it than others when we had to navigate precisely over long distances.

The more people choose to enter back into OW after a fight, the better. It's a lot of wasted time if everyone always jumps back into port. If I am hunting or otherwise sailing around for PvP I want to always get back into OW as soon as possible after fights.

Since the wipe I've participated in ganking for the first time in 6 months. Still not fun. Some try, but chances of getting a decent PB are extremely slim now. Mostly defenders don't bother, and neither do attackers. Participating in PBs now feels like just colouring pixels and that's not at all worth it. Running, or actively participating in, RvR-clans is intense most of the time, time-consuming and even exhausting at times. Lots of RvR players therefore take a well deserved break now while waiting for the patch. To catch up on RL stuff and feel the sun on our skin again. I've just hit lvl 50 crafting on all of my accounts, so I have nothing more to do than rank up my remaining alts a bit further with battle XP, but I also think of saving some of that job to experience the post-wipe grind if there's any changes.

I've taken the opportunity to explore the testbed server for the first time in the last couple of days. FFAs are interesting, but other than that there's only max 10 players on the testbed at a time, so it becomes mostly PvE-testing...

I didn't find an option that fit my opinion in the poll here. On average I think removing global chat is a net loss and not a gain to the game. We are already such a small community. At this point we shouldn't forcibly divide the community even further. Removing enemy chat could work, but we need some form of replacement communication. I really hope that removing global chat will be temporary, and that for in-game chat we get a semaphore-inspired system with short, predefined messages as replacement.

I love the OW, and I enjoy sailing around in it. But the reason I log into this game is RvR. When I log in each day it is either to do conquest (PBs), prepare conquest (raise hostility/money for flags/PvP marks for city keys), or craft PB ships. I don't mind long sails in OW, as I've proven by orchestrating or being involved in each and every assault on Bermuda. And I am nostalgic about the time back when we had to sail our 1 PB capable ship that most of us were limited to, from one frontline to the opposite frontline. However I am concerned about what role RvR will have in this new direction the game is taking. RvR is not (should not be) lobby-based. And RvR is much more than just fair battles. But for RvR to work there has to be a chance for even small nations to accomplish something. The removal of ship transport is actually great news in some ways, because it will make nations with smaller territory able to focus their efforts more, while larger territory nations will have to spread out correspondingly.

As for the mechanics, certainly. And we need some of the limitations of flags back. Most conquest should be in adjacent regions in my opinion. Although there should be possibilities (expensive) to conquer further away than that. Conquest of regions should change too. As far as population goes, the game needs to be developed with a larger population in mind than what we currently have.

I haven't met anyone in the second group of players. That said, with the clarifications that have been added to explain the devs position I'm growing gradually more favourable towards the proposed changes & the new direction for the game. Even the removal of global chat. However, please give us some substitutes for some of the features that will be removed. With more OW sailing we need more content. Rather than the sealed bottles and the enormous amounts of useless fish and salt that we keep collecting, give us types of events or shipwrecks that might pop up on the horizon while we sail from A-B. Something that will encourage us to stay semi-alert while sailing, and also that will encourage us to deviate from our course while increasing our risk of stumbling across other players. Some types of events/loot drops should be more common closer to shore, while others could typically spawn along the more likely routes across open water. Secondly, with the removal of chatting with enemies, please replace this with some form of semaphores-based system to allow us to still have limited communication with enemies. Allow us to send messages, but only by selecting from a predetermined list of responses. That way we can still request/offer surrender, and we can concede defeat or offer an enemy to escape with his ship. People are much less likely to seal-club and more likely to be galant and gentlemanly towards each other if their enemy is can concede that they have been defeated though not yet completely sunk, then the gentlemanly winner can offer their victim to escape intact, without running the risk of the victim thinking that he was able to run away through outsmarting someone. Also, one more thing. Historically admirals frequently sailed for more than one nation in their career. Take Cornelis Tromp for instance, who sailed for both Danmark and the Dutch. Please introduce an option to change nation in-game, but with a price-tag, 1-rank demotion and 3+ months cool-down.

The old front-lines in RvR fighting were a lot more interesting than the current campaigns over detached regions. Resources and refits should be redistributed accordingly, but if they are I have no issue with the proposed changes except for the removal of global chat and battle chat.

Honestly, I think people are reacting too negatively. And I'm among them to some extent. The actual changes that are listed here in the first post I can live with for the most part, and will welcome in most cases. I remember when we had to sail our ships everywhere all the time. Lots of people got burned out for lack of comfort features, but i actually enjoyed it. They've said they might bring some of the comfort features back with a price attached, so those that want fast fights can pay for the speeding up of travel with the proceeds from those fights. What many of us are reacting to are the sentiments expressed, which are probably exaggerations or misunderstandings to some extent. When it is said basically that fun is not a priority, that scares people. As long as shift towards all out resource wars is also reversed, these changes could work out quite well. You could even go back to when we had no teleporting of characters between outposts. However with the direction that is suggested here, I'm not really sure the smaller nations will still have a room in this game. These are strawmen.

Does that mean that even trade chat in ports will be removed? Back in the beginning of last year when we had no formal alliances, some of my clan-mates, outside of port battle windows, would spend their time sailing to the US coast or the Dutch coast and enter freetowns to trade rare danish goods for rare goods from their regions, and earn a massive profit by it. This was part of the "EXPERIENCE" back then, and it was quite realistic age of sail trading gameplay I would say. Is this also no longer going to be possible. I get this, but I was responding to your earlier comments in this thread where you were referring specifically to Teamspeak as the solution to communication problems arising from removing removing enemy communication. I really try to be reasonable and not to judge too much before I've actually tested something, but I feel like you're moving the proverbial "goal post" here.

Don't blow this out of proportions. If this was the case whoever did it probably wouldn't prove his success by randomly changing the profile picture of a player with 57 comments. Though a password refresh is good advice to perform every once in a while in any case.

Change your password.

That's definitely part of it, yes.

I have 6 accounts. All of them war accounts first and economy accounts second. I can adapt to anything. Not everyone will be able to though. Hmm. Sounds good. So in whatever region we decide to set up, we will be able to build whatever type of PvP frigate we want from resources found within that region? Just SOL production will require to be set up in specific areas. I guess that could work.

I fear this will make the game feel a whole lot more empty. Especially in small nations. And how are we going to arrange small battles in OW if we cannot talk to arrange those fights? Not everyone uses Teamspeak all the time after all. I also foresee a lot of situations where players from clans and nations that have meta-diplomacy deals of alliances attack each other have no way to sort it out and call off the fight because they cannot communicate. Lastly, with this coming, can you please make it possible to add enemy players to your friendlist and to allow communication with friends across nations. In any case it should still be able to send PMs to enemies.

Then you need to move resources too. Because currently our crafting places are determined entirely by proximity to resources and refits rather than proximity to enemies.

First, I think some of these changes will be good, even though they will remove a few comforts that I have grown used to. I also remember back when Danmark-Norge was fighting on 3 fronts and we had to all in our fleet carefully schedule our 4 hour teleports each day and we timed our battles so that we would fight the French or Swedes on the eastern front first, and then sail 1.5+ hours from Plymouth to Hispaniola just in time to see the brits buy a flag for one of our ports there. While I enjoy the comforts of teleportation, there was something beautiful about the way it worked back then. But, I always thought that if you wanted the "EXPERIENCE" then there was the PvE-server, with hours of sailing, resource collection, but no surprises or ganking. The PvP-servers provided part of the experience, but also strategy, action, ganking, tears and challenges. Frequently a bit unrealistic, and with a few creature comforts to help the action, but always fun as long as there were people around.

I'm sad to hear this. I don't think the lobby events ever took anything away from OW. Any lack of OW action was due to the shortcoming of OW contents itself. Small battles and so on were rare events anyway. It's possible to arrange duels and small battles in OW by just sailing out of La Navasse or a similar port, so I guess it won't make that much of a difference. The only thing I will definitely miss about small battles were the way they were balanced and the way players that are enemies in OW would be randomly placed into teams in the small battles.

When you hit F11, you automatically make a screenshot of the screen at that moment and it is attached to the report. It's a bit difficult to F11 while having the map open, but it's possible last I checked. Also, this is a graphics bug/glitch if there ever was one, so you should post this in the "Support" forum.

What kind of distinction are you trying to make here? I guess if there's a gameplay issue that's not an ordinary bug, take it to Open world discussions, Economy, Trading and Crafting or General discussions.

Most players, at least among those that I know and play together with, play to have a good time and not to sabotage the fun of others. Be happy that some EU server players plan to sometimes visit the global server to give you guys some extra PvP. Have fun on the global server together with the players who have been intentionally sabotaging the fun of others and driving opponent players away, only then to mock and complain when the fruits of their labour was reaped and players started leaving because there was no fun left in the game. Better that we keep playing the game on another server than stop playing altogether. Then maybe someday we can come together on one server again. There is a saying in some languages, that the bad things that you imagine of others that they would do, is determined by what you yourself would be capable of doing. Most EU players that intend to visit the global server, will do so for variety, PvP-targets and to meet old friends or foes. It's only really in the Western Alliance that there's been open talk of going to the EU server to sabotage after the split. But if you want to come over to the EU server to mess with the map and do some Port Battles in EU prime-time, then be my guest. Maybe some of you'll enjoy fighting skilled opposition and stick around.

A midshipman on a belle poule doesn't give much of an advantage. ----------------- Redeemables for small nations are not really the solution as far as I can see. I remember when we first got the Bucentaure redeemable and every noob was doing ensign missions around their capital with 120 crew on their bucentaure, taking half an hour to reload their guns (especially back before the new crew management system). Bonuses for small playing nations might work, but they should not be in the form of ship redeemables or XP. Ship bonuses will only be a gift to seal clubbers and drive people away from the game after they get ganked in their shiny big ship that they can't sail or crew. XP bonuses will only mean artificially inflating the player numbers with max rank noobs who haven't had time to learn to sail before they get into the biggest ships.

Wow. I'm going to have to log in to the testbed now. This looks very interesting.

Make "area control" a default function. (Wonder if this has been suggested before...?) Consider the situation when choosing what ship to take. Essex and Belle Poule might be at a disadvantage when you sail out alone, but they are both great when sailing together with a friend in a ship that has chasers and can keep a fleeing ship tagged. I always wondered how the chasers on all ships fire straight ahead. On most ships the chaser positions look more like the guns would actually be firing more like a 60 degree angle to the bowsprit in each direction than parallell to the bowsprit. Chaser accuracy and effectiveness on most ships seem actually way too high, although for gameplay reasons I understand this.