Better Method of Engaging players in PVP and Town Captures

[angriff]

While I have been playing this game as little as 197 hours I have found that interaction with other players is almost non-existent outside of special cliques.  I have also noticed that spending hours rushing to a fight to help only to have it end in minutes makes the game frustrating.   Off hour town capturing with no chance for defense is the norm and not the exception.   Ping Pong players who use their teleport to help defend only to find that they are locked out of the game for 3 hours in a place they could have helped at is not conducive to holding persons to the game.

 

I suggest a serious look at the mechanisms in the game that place players into a conflict or fear of conflict with each other that makes the game interesting and appealing.  There should be safe protected waters for trade no body doubts that but once a conflict is brewing it must be apparent to players so they can insure they are in the area not just suddenly a team appears takes two towns and leaves.

 

Some suggestions 

1. Provide for a distribution of power or fleet intelligent reports.  This can either be player based in the area patrolling that automatically updates a tally of number of players in a port and the level of ship strength.  This can be done graphically with changes in highlights in area around port, display in hover report over ports or some sort of admiralty report you read.  Players will know that other players are operating in an area in preparation or in trade.  This would attract opposing players to the area or let them be alert to intercept.  It should be non-existent in low BP areas and very evident in high BP areas.  This would not be unrealistic as Admiralty reports in real kept track of fleet and even ship movements of the enemy.
2. Provide for more player conflict at towns being captured.  While I can appreciate the need to reduce the number of players in a fight for Frame Per Second Rate the current hidden fight does not encourage player engagement around the ports.  Towns should take longer to capture if they are undefended or players should have a way to increase the defense of towns when they are not present.  This can be done with buildings or an agreed tax rate to include this increased hit power in the defending forts.  Important towns will take longer to capture and encourage more players to approach in defense.  (I just spent an hour going to a battle via teleport  only to find it captured when I did the same thing the day before and entered the fight because there was some defense slowing the capture.)  The offense seems to have the advantage of knowing where the battle is even if there is players in the area that can oppose they are not given enough time to react so most just seem to say sorry busy with other things.  This does not encourage team effort to defend only clan effort to invisibly assemble and attack unopposed towns.  Satisfaction is given to the attacker in taking the town but the defenders are given no chance.
3. The effort in buildings to produce economy is very good.  Trade routes activity should be reported to the admiralty rule in 1 above so that players can be encourage to intercept or oppose trade limiting a countries ability to build new ships.  This would make players bring defensive support or patrols to heavy trade routes and player PVP.
4. Too much NPC shows up in attacks near ports.  Reduce it but provide locations on maps of such nearby attacks so players can defensively help.  Now even if you tell everyone on the chat you are in trouble they cant find where you are 90 percent of the time to help.
5. Ship location or spotting report marks put on map by players... a must for interceptions.

 

The effort is to encourage player interaction and conflicts.  It should not be secret knowledge that a large fleet of players is assembling.  The local agents would report in real... have players be given 3 agents to place to get reports if you want.

 

Anyway a start on my dissertation on this subject if approved.