Christendom

The problem is I enjoy playing this game and want to continue playing it. It has the makings of something special... if only the dev team could get out of its own way

There has been a noticeable drop in population since the marks/zone changes.

That is unfortunately the exception

I like it. And make them Random ships each time

Except the USS constitution wasn’t locked in a battle and could run if facing too many foes. So not totally historical. Some simple solutions. - allow players to leave if the BR imbalance is too high. - close the battle after a certain amount of time. 5-15 mins. - if BR is reasonably close the battle is locked and no one can leave. Within say 200 or 300. —— I find your sandbox comment curious. If this game is a sandbox why do we not have traditional sandbox features like clan wars, fighting within nations and a reputation system. Anything goes in the sandbox is the theme is it not?

Working as intended I see.

Laugh. We don’t even have 25 people. You might be referring the time 7 RUBLI sunk like 20 Russians over 2 or 3 battles when we were there and VCO participated, though we were not the majority force or running the show. #fakenews

Admin - “git gud son”

It's nice to see Prussia as the new hot nation to be in and you guys are all about PBs now, but no one else really cares. Just like Russia was the hot nation at the start of the merge and Sweden before that....things will get boring and people will move on. RVR is basically dead. Ports don't matter anymore, so why bother. Other than some fun shallows fights I personally have zero interest in it and I love doing PBs. While hostility isn't really difficult now, it was tweaked just enough to be a little annoying now that you can't go in there and power through it with 1st rates vs 4ths. It's meh. Take rediii's suggestion and go hit Carta. It's a good way to get their vassal states of Denmark and Britain against you and you'll get plenty more content.

8000 BR sure is a lot of ships....

Problem with the BR battles is that people are always gonna bring big ships. Especially now that 1st rate BR was lowered a bit. Sometimes I just want to be in a 4th rate and fight other 4th rates and plan battles along those lines. But yea this latest patch has pretty much killed RVR. Why bother grinding hostility when you can just sit back and collect your 1 mark a week

I'm kinda on the fence of the new BR port battles vs the old 25v25 style with rates being limited. On one hand the smaller BR allows smaller nations and clans to compete and given the current population of the game I'm not sure many nations could field 25v25 battles right now....so it's kinda given this game a life line as it circles down the drain. On the flip side I still feel like some ports should be 25 v 25 with types of ships locked so port battles don't always turn into the big ships follows around small ship type of fights. I'd prefer some sort of hybrid system for both. For example, lets say each region has 5 ports. The capital of that region should be a 25v25 battle with varied rates depending on how important the region. Important region, 25 1st rates (like cartagena). Moderate importance, third rates (think George Town), low importance 4ths or shallow ships (something like San Augustin). Then the rest of the ports in that region could be determined by BR. During my time in Russia we had quite a few 25v25 1st rate fights against @rediii and sweden and to be honest, I miss those. A full 25 has more chess pieces to move around and I feel like there is less "sailing around bored" when it's 25v25 rather than 9 people vs 7. The epicness of those fights has yet to be recreated I think with the BR PBs. For example at New Smyrna last night, which is more or less a useless port, I think it was 6 vs 7/8 people. One side had 4 1st rates in a 2600 BR PB. Just feels wrong. Sure you could still bring 25 ships of a certain type, but if one side is rolling 1st rates and all ships kills matter equally.....it would be very easy to get a circle and 10 kills to just end the fight. I think if we're going to do the BR in PBs method throughout the map, the points lost for each ship needs to be adjusted based on the BR. Losing a MB vs losing a 1st rate is the same. Makes no sense.

A good suggestion, I like the idea someone had of making the pacific a thing and creating a PVE zone. Given the size of the player base, maybe making the gulf a pve zone would be more ideal. The problem arises of ALTS going in there and abusing the non-combat rules and then transferring that money/goods out. The more and more I think about it....alts have really done more harm to this game than good. I wish there was a market in capitals that encouraged players to purchase some of the trade goods like furniture, muskets and the other crap. Like maybe needing them for various ships, kinda like what was done with the L'Ocean when it first came out and the french wine. Having only certain points pay for certain items kinda weirds, but a player supply/demand system would be far better.

I'm not convinced that it's the fear of loss really that holds people back. I'm not sure people really care about their ships that much. Perhaps it's more the fear of simply not knowing what to do and too many rules involved. Basically being overwhelmed. PVP is considerably more complex in NA and the entry level bar is set high. I was talking to a guy in the US who has been playing since the Xmas sale and he said every time he tries to go out and solo pvp he always runs into a group and just gets ganked. He's right, solo pvp is basically dead. The price for admission into PVP is very high in NA and learning the ropes is....difficult. I think it's just more of the "fear of the unknown" syndrome + shit is constantly changing. Another part of the problem is there is no casual PVP. Par for the course.

Casual players. Guys that log on for a couple hours a night and do missions, crafting or light PVP. The crafting in this game isn't complex enough for someone to exclusively be a crafter, which is quite frankly a shame. Casual players are typically your mission guys who like to bang out a few after work. They are the bread and butter of MMO games and Naval Action has forgotten them for a very long time. Missions are stale and beyond boring. People lose interest quickly. Hardcore PVP is not for everyone and neither is RVR.

Correct me if wrong, but I don't think I've seen this elsewhere on the boards. Maybe a change like this deserves it's own post/discussion?

Good shallow water battle tonight against the Brits. Trying to generate content for those Aussies. Brit Victory. Was a fun fight all around.

This SS about sums up the shallow water patrol zone. Waste of time

but you had the ability to escape them. Now it's mindless effortless ganking where a large group just joins an already open battle with large slow/tanky ships and wrecks face. They can't leave, you don't need to be faster.

As predicted they just turned into gank zones. Battles that aren’t over until someone loses sounds good on paper, but all it means is hey I got 3 people in battle, let’s call in some friends. I had fun the first couple of days, but now it’s just meh. Why bother. Nothing to spend my marks on and knowing I’m gonna go out there and not find fair/winnable fights just gives me no motivation to care I enjoyed the PVP event zones of a year ago much better

Give us a reason to fight over ports...because now that everyone just needs 1 port to have lord protector and get marks, who cares. Ports need to matter. We should not be able to craft 5/5 gold ships sitting inside the safety of our capital region. The crafting regions of the fine woods patch I thought was a very nice touch and made capping ports/regions matter other than to just have a battle. Its a sad state of affairs where people would rather lose ports than a 4/5 sturdy gold santi. Make the ships/mods matter less and easier to craft and make the ports mean something again. RVR fixed.

the map is only too big because we do not have the people to fill it. See my posts about the lack features for casual players and the devs catering to only their devout hardcore PVP base. Casual players like to hop on for an hour or 2, bang out a mission or so some light hunting, craft or haul some crap around and log off. The PVP zones is on paper a good solution for these folks, but then they run into a large WO or Prussian gank fleet...die immediately and then say hello kitty it. Which is basically why the zones have already lost most of their appeal. I would prefer PVP to happen organically throughout the map in the manner of hunting or counter hostility type of functions. To bring this full circle back to the game lacking the proper ability to pull casual players out of the safe zones, if the mechanics guided/forced/encouraged players to leave the zones to achieve their crafting or farming...it would create organic PVP that most of us enjoy. The flag system was good for creating this and the desire to go back to times like that is why so many of us pushed for the raid mechanic. The Patrol Mission on the other hand sounds like a good idea with forced battles you cannot leave, but all they really do is support the gank method of playing. It was said in the posts prior to the launch of the zones that they would simply turn into gank fests and color me surprised....they turned into gank fests. The game lacks players. about 90% of all our issues with this game revolve around a lack of people sailing around. With 2500 people on average in the game even ports way out in the gulf would mean something and be used regularly. More people sailing around would create organic PVP and folks trying to dodge heavy traffic areas would create organic PVP in parts of the map that we very seldom see PVP in right now. How do we get more people? Fix your content to appeal to the casual player. Stop trying to focus on fixing PVP to make it work for 500 people and create content that will satisfy 2000 people. Varied PVE missions. More complex crafting / econ systems. Bounty boards. Raids....whatever. The ideas have been throw up on the forums for years now, but for some reason we keep recycling stupid shit like conquest marks /= victory marks and PVP events /= patrol missions. It's like trying to clean and wax your car every weekend so it looks nice, but totally neglect fixing the engine. It'll look nice in your driveway, but no one will use it.

Time and time again we have seen that PVP events simply act as a bandaid for a crafting/econ system that does not inherently promote OW PVP. After a while the events die down because they simply act as a centralized location for gank fleets to hang out. Day 1 and 2 of the patrol zones was fun, but now it seems that it is basically just a gank or be ganked situation. Elite PVPers seldom fight other Elite PVPers, as seen with RUBLI joining the prussians or the Prussians joining BF battles in the gank zones. This wolf on wolf fighting is basically a myth. Prior to the PVP zone Prussian players would sail up the US east coast around the same time RUBLI and the pirates would and instead of fighting each other they would just join up and sink noobs for EZ marks. There are of course exceptions, but they're limited. The PVP events are only ever going to be a quick fix to a broken system. People need to be given reasons to leave the safety of their capitals. Small fixes to the game in the form of crafting regions or something similar would promote an increase in RVR and push players outside the zones, but for some reason they are not considered. If a character can craft virtually anything in their home capital with zero risk, why should they leave the zones? Alts can get whatever woods they want. Still no reason to leave. The reason the PVP events last time they were introduced seemed to have more staying power was because of the paints and the blueprint drops. They also didn't occur during the entire day. Right now we have a zone that lasts all day, gives bountiful marks to various players....but they there is almost nothing to purchase with those marks. No paints, no special items. Just the same tired of PVP store that's been in the game for months. If you're going to create a zone based around rewarding marks as the primary incentive for PVP in a MMO, you perhaps need to have the ability to cash those marks in and buy rarer items. The zones are already starting to lose steam and it hasn't even been a week. The game needs proper mechanics fixes and less relying on easy to code crutches.

This situation was isolated to the PVP Patrol Zone and the Patrol Zone only. Jorge and myself have already discussed the issue. From the US perspective the PVP zones are a FFA area and any alliances should not be honored as players entering the PVP zone will not necessarily be aware of whom they are attacking and cannot control who joins their battles. @Jorge feel free to correct me here, but I do believe you are of a similar mind?

AND that's what you get when you come up on the east coast. Stay out of malibu lebowski!