Christendom

What’s funny is I don’t even recall Rax doing anything with Russia until the end there when people stopped showing up. None of the carta fights or the Belize campaigns. I think his biggest contribution to the US was losing to you guys at New Smyrna and then getting his fleet sunk outside San Augustin last weekend against Kingy when he rushed to tag them directly under the enemy fort and out of range of the 10-15 other 1st rates out there that could have helped. He of course blamed that one on others too. Now he can go carry KoC and the French since I guess he’s going there now to camp US noobs and punish them for not loving him enough. Ironic I suppose. The dude loves the east coast and will never leave it.

Certain Spanish. Any 7up will be let go as an old friend courtesy should they not start shooting back. William was down there last night hunting and actually found a Russian in the Spanish safe zone. He dead. With the servers barely cracking 400 these days and well under 200 in our time zone one should be less picky about their targets. Banished here talks a good no ally game but I seem to recall multiple French and Pirate clans up there screening at New Smyrna. Some of the pirates even told me he asked them nicely to come...If that sure was a lot of “shared interests” I’d hate to see what real alliances look like. Potato Potatoe I guess.

Maybe if the game picks up we’ll leave for elsewhere, but I have a hard time justifying spending 20 bucks a person given the current sorry state of affairs with this game. Not to mention charging a DLC to change nations in a game that has yet to be released and doesn’t have a release date in sight is absurd. Even if we did go to say Poland a certain someone would continue his VCO hunt until Poland runs out of ports. Not fair to whatever remains down there. Prussia on the other hand....

More or less. I don’t think we’ve met in a month or so. We’re just making it official. The senate and leadership is just paper leaders who like to play at feeling important and leaders of clans who show up to screen you guys in frigates. Or usually not at all it. We actually have a cabinet with “secretaries” and our secretary of war hasn’t been to a contested PB or a hostility grind since we moved to the US. Being a smaller group of players (7-8 on a good day) that doesn’t really recruit we are unfortunately dependent on others to do RVR... which doesn’t seem to happen in the US much unless it’s in the shallows due to port costs, lack of interest, broken spirits or just too afraid to lose ships. We played ball for a while and let people who shouldn’t be running things run them, had a lot of half assed battles and embarrassing losses. Tagging too early under forts, guys afk’n losing PBs, dudes sailing off between 1st rates and dying...whatever. Anyway, who knows if this patch will bring people back or not. Might as well have a little fun yolo’n around while Rome burns and rustle up as much PvP as we can. Time to pull a Fleetwood Mac and ....

This game is already partially clan based. Clan owned ports, clan taxes, friendly clan lists....might as well make it all the way. 11 Nations is absurdly stupid. It divides the smaller nations up by clan pretty much anyway. Anyway this is my vision for a clan based game, I'll try to be brief. 3-4 Starter Nations. GB, France, Spain....maybe US or Dutch to be accurate. Players can craft, farm, PVP, maybe light RVR (like raids on other starter nations)...to their hearts delight in those nations. If they want to go do heavy RVR they need to purchase a letter of marque and create a company (clan) and go out and carve their own slice of the map in the several hundred player owned ports. The letter of marque will put them into sort of like an outlaw/hard mode faction where they can pick and choose diplomacy. Declare war on other clans, ally with them or even be neutral and not take their ports but just PVP. If said Company loses all their ports they lose their charter and go back to their respective starter nations to try again. Sounds like a game I would very much like to play. PS stop listening to tittybaby aka Lars. Merge didn't kill the game. Lack of content did.

Those players bail on you? Hunt them afterwards. Obviously the wappen assumed the players around him were friendly and would help, if a friendly clan on your ally list decides to bail on them you and "un-friend" and hunt them.

And situations like this is unfortunately why I don't bother to go out of my way to help with the coast guard. Too many bad tags, too many fir/fir ships and too many people bailing out early. This screenshot is very good indicator as to why we need to have a strictly clan based game and the ability to choose one's allies rather than hope one's nation will be there to help them.

I think the issue with RVR right now is.....why bother? Conquest leader board? Doesn't matter. Everyone gets marks regardless. Value of the port? Again, doesn't matter. Only a handful of ports on the map make consistent money every day to turn a profit. One is protected by evening timers, another by a full herc fleet during the day and the other one is a 10k BR swede fleet. Chances of getting one of them is very unlikely. So no one really tries. Other Nation interference. Spain attacking George Town this week is a good example. Danes, Dutch, French, Couple Swedes, Prussians and I think even the Pirates were out there attacking one side or other. At some point it's like meh, if I have to fight everyone....why bother. RVR is stale. The meta is stale. The maps are stale. The hostility is beyond stale. You fight the same people pretty much over and over. And your reward, PVP marks and a port you have to pay for. All woods can be gotten with alts at this point. Everything else is provided for in the safe zone. Why even leave?

Almost every MMO I've played has zones where players progress through until they get to the show or the sandbox. Albion has blue zones (NO PVP), Yellow (Flagged PVP no loot) and Red (Full PVP full loot). Technically there is a black zone too, but it's like Red+++. WoW has contested zones and uncontested. Eve has different sectors. High to Null. Even in Star Wars Galaxies you had to flag yourself for PVP in the major cities. Naval Action has nothing. ---- There needs to be an area for the carebears to do their thing without worrying about getting bullied out of the game. Most games limit what these players can craft or obtain in the newbie zones and the player hits sort of a wall if he wants to progress. If they want higher level mobs to kill, higher level crafting mats or dungeons...they have to progress to the next area. Eventually they get to the point where they venture out into the real part of the game, the sandbox. I see no reason why NA has to be any different. To do so they would need to streamline the game a bit more, cut back on nations and consolidate starting areas and unfortunately bend realism a bit to create solid game play. This game to needs create areas where each nation has a capital, couple crafting ports and limit what you can make. As the characters progress they go to a different zone on the map where only certain types of missions spawn and rank appropriate NPCs roam. For Example. Bahamas - Rookie Zone. Each nation has a capital and a port or 2. No PVP in the rookie zone. can only craft up 5th rates or lower. Resources here can't be used in higher level areas. Gulf - Mid Level Zone. Each Nation has a capital and a port or 2. Light PVP outside of protected waters. Rank appropriate NPCs and Missions. Current Regional Capitals - High Level Zone. Each nation has a capital and appropriate ports to craft basic ships. 3/5 standard green or blue ships. No special woods spawn inside capital area ports. Moderately sized safe zone. Player owned ports - Anything goes. Spawn valuable woods based on location. Crafting ships will give a random guaranteed trim and a change to get a purp or gold ship. NPCs and Missions killed or spawned outside of the zones grant higher XP, More money & better loot, Missions stay open longer. Risk vs Reward. ------ Naval Action solved.

Oh my

This system would work well if we had the people to fill up most of the map and make more than a handful of ports useful. But we don’t. This game needs players first and foremost. It also needs to create reasons for players to go to player owned ports. Increased rare ship crafting percentages. Maybe special trim regions. Something. In typical lazy dev fashion they flipped the switch on increased port costs without giving players a reason to need those ports in the first place or ways to make the ports pay for themselves. Admin is kind of like my wife, she always forgets to pick up bread when she grabs peanut butter at the store. It’s like well, wtf do I now. Increasing port timer costs without creating a reason to own the ports is exactly the same thing.

Anyway we need to stop mucking up this thread. Need to save room for spain to change it's status towards me a few more times.

I'm sure you do. 3/4 nations vs the US on the coast. Same thing happens outside KPR. Sweden vs France/Prussia/Dutch/Spain down south. In the patrol zones Prussians joining Dane battles or Dutch battles vs pirates or whatever groups happen to be the noobs. All these pro players never do seem to fight each other. Easy marks are easy marks I guess. The gang bang killed the pirates/sorry (or maybe Hachi did 🙂) and Russia. Same shit different day.

What is the point at which one goes from troll to trash and why hasn't KoC hit it yet?

Carriers have arrived.

Hey we're almost on your level. Everyone and their uncle is up on the east coast. In a game that barely cracks 400 players on during prime time and 200 or less during US prime time I don't think being allied with 3/4 nations is the best idea for server health or providing content. But that's just me. Global died because it was 4 nations vs 1 small one, I see similar things happening here.

Which is why the game needs to be encouraging players to leave the zones organically rather than wasting dev time altering the zones so other gankers can get in. If you keep beating down the players with a stick they'll just move elsewhere. You can't force them to PVP. If you beat them with a stick occasionally and make sure they get a carrot sometimes maybe they'll leave the zones to see if it's worth it.

this past week with spain has been like a highschool romance. On again...off again...on again..

Interesting change.

PLEASE

This still being here is curious. Whats the dealio?

Make it clan or group level based. Most nations are fractured and incapable of making combined decisions, let alone put together an elite team without massive levels of salt. Or have maybe have inter nation tournaments to determine who goes on to fight other national teams. I’d be down to help organize and stream ——— This is good content creation, but I feel like the only thing that will bring players back now would be one hell of a patch.

The sandbox mantra is fine and sustainable, just the boundaries of the sandbox need to be clearly defined and not overlap with new player areas. The devs job should be to get the new player from the steam checkout and into the sandbox safely and moderately aware of how the game works. NA does not accomplish that. I know in most games that are open world MMO style it’ll be days until you’re put into a position to see an enemy. Here it’s 30 seconds. Simple protections and zones need to be in place to reach that new player how to play before he gets to the sandbox

I mean you can’t make people PVP and no, the PVE server isn’t a solution. PVP doesn’t imply that you HAVE to PVP, just that it’s an option. In most OW MMO games there is an acceptable level of ganking players are willing to put up with. Losing a load of stuff happens occasionally, no big deal. But constantly getting killed because players are bored isn’t fun. So they leave and you end up with current levels of players we have right now.