Christendom

You cannot expect your game population to be white knights. If they see a player, they'll sink a player. That's why the game needs to put protections in place to protect these new players so they stick with the game and become old players. Most of us, including a lot of the old "war dogs" on these forums that are anti-safe zones and anti-convenience were able to grind up to rear admiral back when missions and AI fleets were able to close, the AI were easier to kill and ships were far easier to get. So while it's cute to say that its a "PVP game and people should get over it", let's remind these guys that back when they were grinding up it was a very different game than it is now. Most Open World MMOs, and by most I mean the successful ones, manage to protect their players through a series of zones. Albion had Blue, Red and Black zones (no PVP, light PVP, full loot no holds bars PVP), PoTBS had red zones, World of Warcraft has contested and uncontested zones and I know EVE has multiple "secs" that limit PVP. These areas ensure players can safely farm, craft and mission to their hearts delight and HOPEFULLY turn into old players who will then venture forth into the not so safe zones and go experience the game to it's fullest. Up until 6 months ago, Naval Action had nothing. Zero protections for the new player. A new player can level up in a basic cutter, use all his cash to purchase that first new frigate and then immediately sail out of the capital area into the waiting arms of enemy players and lose everything instantly. This is/was a terrible way to introduce new players to your game. This is one of the reasons...probably one of the biggest....why this game has sold over 120k copies and has only had a steady population of 1000 or less on at one time. It's just an inhospitable environment for a new player. I can't even count the amount of new players I've seen talk in nation chat asking questions, watching them figure out the less than intuitive UI...putting cannons on their ships and then watching them talk about losing that first ship they purchased....and then never seeing them again in nation. Another one down the drain. So now we have safe zones. They're big, there's a lot of them....most people still don't know all the rules about them and they are imperfect. The simple fact that I can roll up to KPR and jump into an AI fleet literally in front of the forts and gank a player in their own capital waters just flat out astonishes me. In real life you would not be able to sail an enemy ship within sight of KPR and sink ships or traders right under the port noses.....why can you do it in game? We keep tailoring the PVP ROE to cater to all these wolves that refuse to fight other wolves and only want to sink sheep for PVP marks. Frankly we should be saying screw them and let them fight each other. They very rarely do. The other day on these forums I saw a screenshot of about 10-15 pirates vs Spanish, Russians, BF and Prussians. All the "elite of the elite" vs 1 group of pirates. What a joke. Anyway....Successful games need to protect their new players. Naval Action does not. Which is why we don't have a lot of players. Focus on making this game more casual friendly and maybe people will return. More people = more PVP. Problem solved.

I still like the 1v1 and 3v3 format. Throw me on the list to help organize.

That realism seems to only apply to certain things. I have a hunch that Nelson wasn't able to repair his ship to an almost "like new" condition every 15mins. Or was he?

Chain limited....but not repairs. Sigh. Get ready for the endless cycle of being tagged over and over on the OW.

When you think about it, this game just flat out punishes the PVE / Casual type of player. They can't even kill AI outside their capital in safety anymore. The battles stay open indefinitely so anyone can just jump in and gank them. If you want to grind up you need to either be in a very remote spot on the map killing AI or you're stuck doing regular missions in the safe zone. Not much variety. It's a joke really how poor of a job this game does at trying to keep casuals interested in playing....all for the sake of the "hardcore PVP" crowd that refuse to fight each other and because the pop is dwindling so much, they HAVE to be able to hunt in the safe zones.

I don't think no names has had the desired effect of increasing PVP. If anything pop has dropped since that patch.

I think the biggest issue currently is that after playing for almost 2 years, the game has pretty much the exact same level of content as the day I started playing. New ships is not new content. Missions are exactly the same, crafting is the same and trading is the same. The rules and ROE for PVP and RVR keep changing, but they're fundamentally the same thing. The dev team just keeps waffling back and forth on the same old issues, but nothing new seems to be created. PVP keeps getting tweaked to cater more and more to the "hardcore" type of player, but meanwhile the casual player has been sorely neglected and unfortunately seems to have given up on the game. I'm not sure what the percentage of players who ACTIVELY engage in PVP and RVR are, but lets say it's 20% (prolly lower). So that means at least 80% of the game's population has been ignored for the better part of a couple years and hasn't really had any new content. It's no wonder they stop playing. The majority of these reviews aren't from hardcore vets that are disgruntled. They're from your average casual gamer who played the game for a week and got bored. After about 2-3 days of solid gaming your average player has experienced the highest level of content this game has to offer. That's not good. Other than the size of the ship in missions they do not really get harder or more challenging, the loot does not scale and what is perhaps the biggest crime....there is zero variety. Just go out, sink, return. LAZY game design. The primary reason why I continue to play this game is because I enjoy the group of people I play with. If they're not on, usually I'm not. If they were to go to another game...I'd follow. I suspect most folks are in the same boat as me. So yea if you're charging $40 for an early access game and after 2 years the game doesn't really feel like it's anywhere close to being out of early access.....I think some negative reviews are warranted.

if you're going to charge for early access....you open yourself up for reviews.

but but but the duel room takes away from the OW experience........introduces patrol zone pvp circles instead

It's also important to note that chain was not really used that often and at very close ranges. Far closer than what in-game ranges are. Round shot was more effective against sails/rigging than it currently is in game. I personally like the idea of limiting chain, but repairs needs to far more restricted.

And the key part is he is almost never alone and very rarely outgunned. Now it's naval gank action now with the ability to outrun revenge fleets because they run out of chain. @admin if you want to make this really dynamic you will make chain shot a resource like hull/rig reps. Once you're out, you're out and you must replenish in port or loot. Otherwise this will just become an endless cycle of tagging, running in battle, re-tagging, running in battle rise repeat.

I'm all for the limitation of chain shot.....IF repairs are limited as well. If we're playing the realism card here it makes zero sense to have unlimited repairs (almost a brand new ship sometimes) and then have limited chain shot. If we're going for realism, lets go for realism. This half in half out shit is just flat out frustrating. PS - some serious meltdown in this thread. Not a good look for potential game buyers.

Limiting chain without limiting repairs is absurdly stupid IMO

I am of Texas' opinion here. We already have enough systems in place to encourage ganking and unfair fights, we don't really need another. Now if we had a "solo pvp" leader board that would be interesting. I feel like 10v3 ganks in the patrol zone are already rewarded enough. I dislike everything about the marks system we currently have and by relation, a leader board. The ultimate prize in the time period that this game is focused on was to take the ship and it's cargo...hopefully safely back to port. Now we just sink 1st rates and indiamen loaded with stuff for lazy pvp marks. Just seems wrong. If I wanted a leader board game and stupid pixel rewards I'd go play overwatch or something.

PVP marks were removed shortly after the wipe.

Just feels like this game lost a little bit of it's "specialness" if you will - when we went to a marks system. The reward was always about the chase, the prize and a little bit of gold and XP for your effort. With the upgrade system we have now it's kinda asinine that we have to sink ships for marks. It turned PVP into yet another farm to get marks to purchase special books and ships. I remember hunting traders and getting excited when there were a couple mils worth of goods on them I could sail back into port (Hopefully) for a little extra cherry on top of the sundae. Now we just sink em for marks. It feels cheap and just lessens the experience. I haven't enjoyed the OW as much since.

Yea it kills me when we have to sink a 1st rate for hello kittying marks. I feel like I've enjoyed the game less since the switch to marks and the need to sink, not capture everything was removed. Nelson didn't need PVP marks, neither do we.

All you really need to know is that since the time of the patch, which included patrol zones, no ship names and port cost increases....the overall game population and activity if you will, has diminished. There are less PBs, smaller amounts of fights in the patrol zones and what little OW pvp we did have prior to the patrol zones seems to have dried up for the most part unless you are outside KPR or Ctown. https://gyazo.com/6f74710c0126d95fe79a255e5e2b2ce5 it appears things have been steadily trending downward since the post merge bump in activity. March saw a fairly large patch release changing things up and we typically see a slight increase in numbers when those hit. No bueno

Pada is one of these captains that likes to come on the forums occasionally and drop a nugget of wisdom about how the game should be harder, more life like, less quality of life features....blah blah...basically anything that resembles catering to the casual type of player. He was one of the big proponents of the hardcore grinding/ship knowledge and no map coordinates changes. Basically ideas that made a shit load of people quit. The thing is though....he doesn't actually play the game with any consistency. He'll pop on for a couple weeks here and there, but he's not down there "in the trenches" so to speak like the rest of us who try to make this game works. He pisses off, throws in his 2cents on the forums and trys to alter a game he really doesn't play much of. A lot of captains are like this, including quite a few here on this thread. Arm chair captains who are trying to reimagine their glory days of Naval Action back when it was a "better game". And he's definitely entitled to his opinion. I just wish admin would listen to people who actually play this game and in particular play the more casual aspect of it. By making them more interesting? Increase loot. Increase variety. Whatever. Entire MMOs are based on missions and quest lines, MMOs that have millions of people. We can't even keep 1000 people interested in this game at one time.

Says the guy who barely plays. If this game was shaped in the image you want, no one would play it. It's already been shaped far too much in the image that hardcore PVPers (or self proclaimed ones anyway) want.....and amazingly not many people play it. Every single time this game has a change that makes it more difficult or less enjoyable for casual players....people quit. Every single time. Players = Content and More players means we need more casual content to keep them busy. It's a very easy formula.

Astonishingly I don't feel like this change has improved or increased PVP at all. If anything the game seems more dead since that patch. Back when you could see everyone's names the sharks very rarely fought the sharks. Let's take you for example. Instead of joining a nation that badly needs PVP help and guidance you just up and joined the best PVP nation in the game. You are proof that my argument is correct. If you wanted MORE pvp you would of just went brit and you'll get all the PVP you can stake a stick at in 30mins or less. But you wanted GOOD PvP, aka good people sinking noobs, so you went Prussia. I don't begrudge you that decision, just simply reaffirming that these so called "elite pvpers" never seem to end up fighting each other. RUBLI and BF almost always join each other in the zones or the OW. Same with the Prussians and WO outside Ctown. Basically this change is happening because the gankers are upset they have to work for PVP and they can't just gorge themselves outside capitals anymore.

or maybe the sharks just need to go after the sharks. Very rarely does that happen. A typical evening has the sharks teaming up to fight the fish outside KPR or Charleston

Any thoughts on actually treating the problem rather than the symptoms and work on creating incentives for players to leave the safe zones? The current in-game population very rarely cracks 600 players during a prime time EU evening unless there are a couple of port battles scheduled. Spread 600 players across 11 nations and you end up with a map that is too large to support 600 players and to find quality content you need to travel to areas where players can be found. Capitals. Limiting the amount of protection the safe zones provides will only decrease the amount of players who hang out it them.....and increase the amount of people hunting in them, further killing off an already diminished casual player base to satisfy the elite few. This game needs more players. We need more content for your casual joe who logs in a couple hours every evening. We need mission variety. We need a functioning economy. We need more complex crafting. We need reasons to leave the safe zones. This fix is insignificant. It will only make picking over the bones of the capitals slightly more fun until more people quit out of frustration or boredom.

One day we'll realize that reinforcement zones aren't the problem and it's really the fact that this game and it's map were designed for a server population of 2000+ players. We're barely getting by with 600. OW PVP is going to be difficult to find when you have 600 players on at max diluted into 11 different nations. If the game focused on supporting it's casual players and didn't chase them off with hardcore PVP mechanics and a general lack of content, we might actually have more fish in the sea to catch. BUUUUUUT we keep tailoring this game to please the 100 or so PVP elite that don't actually fight each other and instead just gank up to sink noobs.

to quote yourself "really tiring to see accusations... Please use Tribunal or in game toll to report it." Feel free to bring Russia up on charges for whatever they were doing. Your daddy KoC and you it seems constantly brings up Cap Francais. A battle that was literally my first hour in SORRY and I had no knowledge that it was arranged (most of SORRY did not either). We were punished for it and life goes on. But since you guys keep bringing up, I'll keep bringing up Chester's, Queen's, Simon's and LoneWolfs alt farming shenanigans.