Christendom

this game is not very intuitive. in fact the new UI with it's little weird quirks on having to hover over parts of it to see additional info somehow manages to be less intuitive than the old version. A hard feat to top.

Being able to purchase more outpost spots allows players (and in particular, clans) to have a significant advantage on the map and in conquest with a "be everywhere at once" type of response. Your standard player who did not purchase the expanded outpost spots is at a steep disadvantage. Basically with the swipe of a credit card a player can have significantly better map presence vs a player who did not. This is P2W. Buildings and dockspace can be achieved by having an alt account, so the P2W damage is easily mitigated. One cannot achieve the same results with a 2nd character in terms of outposts. The ship DLC is pay to win also, but it's "less" damaging if those ships continue to stay out of port battles. I hope they do. Personally I'm not really a fan of any of these DLCs, it's a cash grab to ensure they've got even more of our money before the game has been released (if ever). One could say that we're helping to fund development and while that might be true, let's not forget that we've already pre-funded development by pre-purchasing an early access game.

https://gyazo.com/26905fccfc3acbcf3e3301872e44fc2f Should be "Old Bahama Channel" unless I'm missing something

Just popped on to see it. Some first impressions - this compass has got to go. Yikes - Don't like the color for FFA ports (I'm also colorblind so take that with objectivity) - Feel like capital port icons should be larger on the map as well as port icons respectively - It's Caribbean, not Carribean - Would prefer a method to turn off the hotkey buttons at the bottom Overall pretty clean. I really like the map.

With the premium ship DLC is there a cool down between claiming hercs like the yacht redeemable or is this a 1 off?

This game needs more reasons to keep people engaged and hauling stuff on the water, not less. There are plenty of games where you can swipe your card, collect premium stuff and go shoot your enemies. Let's stop trying to make Naval Action one of them

When the French come up the coast to chop onions...will they cry?

People like variety.

no PVE content = no players.

Then why bother commented. Go away

I agree with you, but I don't think the game went far enough in regards to the clan based system. We're stuck in this limbo currently where nations are supposed to matter, but they really don't. Especially with the amount of alts that people use. Let's take my guys for example. We operate within the nation, but not really. We have no need of national ports (currently) and the ports we need resources from can be gotten through alts. In fact the french taking most of coastline from the US has made it easier for us to get woods, less competition. Effectively we are our own little nation. I don't even have Ctown as a port. I feel like most clans operate this way. The larger nations all have internal strife that just cause people to leave. GB, US, Pirates...even France has some rogue clan issues. The nation system, in this current iteration of the game anyway, is dead. We need to trim back the importance of nations ( and the number of them) and move towards for of a clan based system. I feel like when we drop them the game will be much better off. Let nations simply be a backdrop as like a "starting race" in other games

Actually you might not be too far from the truth. I've been brooding more and more over the fact that the BR port battle change killed this game, in the big picture. Don't get me wrong...I like the change, but I think changing to a BR port battle along with clan owned ports inherently shifted this game towards more of a clan based system, but unfortunately the game did not go far enough into the clan based system and this limbo is hurting us. Look at most nations. Internal strife, clans vs clans is tearing them apart and they are mostly RVR non-functional. Some of the smaller nations are better off because only a handful of clans run them and work together. Russia worked back in the day because it was really only 3 clans that did things and we all worked together. Prussia works because it's only a couple clans. Larger nations with more actors and clans going in several different directions just doesn't work. At least when we had the 25man system and national owned ports, there was a common goal. Now not so much. So basically we either need to more towards more of a clan based system, get rid of nations and focus on clan alliances OR we need to revert back to the old system.

Yea but most MMO games have baked in content. We do not. The only folks that stick around a month or 2 after a big patch are the hardcore guys who enjoy RVR and PVP....which is great, but not a large enough population to sustain the game for long as we keep seeing. There needs to be goals for the casual player beyond making money and sinking bots. Until we figure that out, the game will never keep it's casual players for long.

Because there simply is not enough for people to do. You can't expect everyone to want to PVP or do RVR 100% of the time. People want quest lines, achievements, titles on their names, cosmetic skins/paints/whatever....basically people want varied content. NA has none of these things that typical MMO games feature. There is no progression anywhere past max rank other than ship slots. People want skill trees. To sum it up, people need goals in these types of games to keep them going. Collect all of a certain type of thing, badges from visiting various ports.....who knows. Throwing everyone together in a sandbox and say go have fun is great, but there has to be pre existing PVE content to keep people busy.

We can’t make bored players stick around

then clearly you don't need the extra advantage of hercs.

Alts that you have to put time and effort into leveling and positioning. Buying more accounts isn't pay to win, its simply buying more accounts to play the game more. Purchasing an OP shallow water ship that is 2x better than the closest competition and then taking them into a PB vs players WHO did not purchase the ship is gaining a steep competitive advantage with the click of a button and the swipe of a card. That is pay to win. Leveling up another account you have to pay for the privilege to spend more time on this game. See the difference? Admin referenced world of warcraft earlier today. One can purchase many things related to the game via tokens or IRL money. Game time, character names, account transfers, faction chances, faster mounts, skins..pets...whatever. What you CANNOT purchase is an item that will give you a competitive edge in it's end game raiding. I feel GameLabs should follow a similar line of thought here. I'll wager you haven't sailed the herc around much. I've actually taken one into a port battle a few times. It's bullshit OP. It's also fun. If you want to sail around the shallows and terrorize shipping or random PVP, that's 20 bucks well spent. Using it for competitive conquest would be a disaster for shallow water battles, which are supposed to be the entry level battle in this game for newer players. Imagine a bunch of noobs grind up a shallow port and attempt their first battle, they immediately get smashed by 15 hercs and sink none. Doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me. This is a pure pay to win cash grab and frankly it stinks.

I don’t follow. My suggestion would be to protect the very little amount of content we do have and not let pay to win schemes ruin it. But that’s just me. If people want to buy ships and rule the waves of the OW.. sure But allowing p2w ships in this games only form of high end content would be a very poor decision. The teams that pay the most will always win

They said the same shit about the wasa. It took 6 months to balance it. Some would say it’s still not balanced. You have more faith than I that they’ll balance the herc. They won’t. No premium ships in PBs please.

Let the herc be a premium OP ship and just have it be the scourge of the shallows. Just not shallow PBs. All premium ships purchased through DLC should be exempt from port battles / end game conquest. Allowing them in creates a very slippery pay to win dynamic I think most people would prefer this game not take that route

It took the better part of a year for the wasa to be balanced correctly and that was just 1 ship. I have zero confidence that we'll somehow be able to manage 5-6 shallow water ships in any sort of time that doesn't let the herc/requin ruin shallow water battles for months. Easier to just exclude the 2 premium ships from PBs entirely. Hercs have already ruined shallow water PBs, the side with more of them automatically wins. They have also already ruined the shallow water patrol zone. Or maybe the goal here is to not balance and let the OP p2w ships rule the waves so people will buy them. Either way, I'm not a fan. Case and point - More hercs = win

If people want to use the herc and xebec to ravage on the open water I’m cool with it. But pay 2 win ships in PBs is bullshit IMO. It took months to get the wasa balanced correctly. I’m not confident in them getting the other shallow ships balanced to compete with the herc. In the meantime everyone will be using hercs and shallow PBS will be imbalanced as fuck. We used to have 25 wasa battles, now it’ll be 25 hercs. I hope the rest of you fully appreciate how slippery of a slope this is. No premium p2w ships in port battles please.

PLEASE remove the ability of the herc to enter shallow battles (and the requin). The ability of the herc already has imbalanced PBS and OW fights in the shallows enough. Please no pay to win port battles.