open world has me about to call uncle on this game

[BungeeLemming]

Only issue I have atm is that the teleport CD is so long.

What I do atm is wake up, start the computer, go brakfast, make ready for work and while doing that I teleport my shipor character back to my hometown where I do eco.

 

In the evening I log on, klick eco, do stuff and when my clan is ready for pvp I port to the harbour around which we intent to fight our fights. Once we are done my CD is still at 1-2 hours.

 

Next morning I wake up, start the computer..

 

What I want is: come back from work, do some econ, pvp 2-3 hours, go sleep.

Come back another day, rinse and repeat more or less. But Rigt now Its either econ or pvp when I dont log on in the morning. And its 99% the decision to go pvp

[Atomic Moose]

it is nice to see the mods and admin participating in this but my view is that is just takes to long to do anything and most of the people i have got play this game more than 3/4 about 7 people have quit over this main reason, they have a life and dont want to spend 75% of their game play just sailing

 

589 people were on pvp2 at primetime last nite over a 60% drop in one month that is not a sign of a stable game even in early access and i feel the one of the main reasons is the travel time to do anything i know the realism people like but the majority doesnt and it shows in the pop

 

also shrouded didnt mean to sound like an attack personally but most people in 4months barely have 300hrs in a game not 1000s games has to be made for those people cause the people who can play as much as you are a very minority you have to see that for the best of the game

there has to be a happy medium to the game and at this point it isnt

 

i am just trying to improve the game and with people quiting very soon after they start i feel this is one of the easiest  fixes

and boy i with is played when you could just port and move at will i bet the game was so much more fun

[The Spud]

You just need more things to do besides missions, the travel time should not be changed as it will make the map seem smaller. And it might make previously "safe" ports for capping suddenly accesible from a enemy port alot further away.

My proposal:

 

- Friendly battle you can do in a port, without gaining XP or gold and without losing dura. Just for when nothing is happening, you can at least enjoy a good fight with some mates so you know once and for all who is better at sinking or boarding.

- Random big events around bussy places. Big staged ship battles, heck who knows a sailing race, around different flags. Escort missions, alot of this has been named.

- Maybe bigger groups instead of 5, more like 25, the max amount of ships in a battle.

- Make voice chat available in your group instead of using TS

- A Risk like challenge you can buy that gives nice XP "Sink X amount of enemy ships within X hours" "Cap port X" " Destroy a flag carrier".

- Many more can be added.

 

Now you have action - boring sailing - waiting for an enemy - action - boring sailing - etc... You should have more possibilities to do things, it will make the sailing less boring if you can do something else you see along the way to cut the trip in half...

[Goodblue]

When I had to travel longer then an hour to a place, I just opened up Hearthstone or something else to keep myself entertained for that hour. There is enough stuff you can do in that hour you have to sail.

[Leviathan]

I think the size of the map and the travel time is about right, however I wouldn't mind seeing the teleport cooldown reduced to maybe 2 hours

 

Right now the problem I am seeing is that we are trying to keep our teleport open in case we have to defend a port attack. If you happen to log on a little late you are effectively stuck in that particular region waiting for the timer window to open. This of course severely limits your play options and forces you to make a decision to stay available for port defense or go have fun doing other things. All too often once you teleport to defend a port you are effectively done for the night unless you there are skirmishes outside of the port battle to join or you make a 2 hour commitment to go find PvP afterward.

 

Ultimately this may be more of a port battle mechanic issue than a timer issue, but it often feels we are handcuffed to port timers instead of being free to go find PvP or explore. Personally, I want to spend more of my time finding open world PvP without the looming thought of having to teleport to defend a port.

[RA6E]

Because spending 2 hours of your 3 hour gaming experience  alt-tabbing you-tube in order to get to and from a port battle or blankly staring at your  sailing ship endlessly floating across open world for a massive 15-20 mins of "Naval Action" is a sure-fire recipe for success...............      I don't think more teleporting or removing the wind is the answer.  But,  I do think it takes about twice as long to get around the open world as it should in order to keep any casual gamers happy.  Can time compression not be advanced somewhat to allow some level of vastness of the world  for the niche hard core set, yet keep players who are looking for a reasonably accessible PVP experience happy also?    The further I get into PVP the harder it is to be happy with this game.  Being able to teleport with ship to any owned outpost once a day might help?   As is now,  that can only be done to "capital" which makes it virtually useless for any PVP function.  I get trying to capture the realism of the era?    But surely you guys have some interest in holding hard-core gamers that can't invest 6 hours a day into your game.  And even if they can,  will they want to spend half their time in game performing this mindless, mundane task for 1/2 or more of their gaming session?     Open World Travel,  IMO, is Game-breaking? 

[BluewaterMP]

I would disagree with the preceding evaluations wanting to add teleports or disabling wind effects. I personally do not find realism to be boring. I'm quite sure sailors of the time would have also enjoyed teleporting all over the world with there cargo. Here is the problem with that in real life and in game. It would decimate the economy and people would be bored with the game because it is too easy. I think a lot of the "boredom" (which I believe to be just impatiences) could easily be solved by adding:

 

1. More NPC pirates outside the normal shipping lanes with orders to attack anything on site.

2. Sea life encounters, possibly adding whaling ships and related resources to the economy.

3. Other open sea encounters like roaming national armadas that could be attacked by clans with huge rewards.

4. Lost treasure land adventures

 

In the end I would ask NOT to over simplify the game that will surely reduce long term play ability.

 

This is the correct approach.  The problem isn't the map size, or the ship speed - in fact I think it would be counterproductive to change either much.  I love the huge map... I mean its a scaled down version of the Caribbean, one of the most beautiful places on earth.  Hell, the only time my girlfriend shows any interest in this game is when I am sailing around in the OW and there is some beautiful landscape.

 

The problem is there is nothing meaningful to do on the map.    No chance of random encounters, fun surprises, discoveries, etc.  Just beautiful vistas and looooooots of staring at the screen twiddling your thumbs.

 

 

Rose and Moose, we had unlimited character teleport at one time. It was beautiful. Only sailing to get stuff moved or getting your ship to the fight.

Now I'm forced to enjoy the realism of alt-tabbing while displacing virtual seawater. Apparently, watching the screen for extended periods of time doing nothing is someone's idea of "suspension of disbelief"... or "realism"... or "the economy needs it!" or whatever excuse they make up.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

This man is doing the lords work in all threads.

 

 

if you want PvP without a lot of OW sailing there are two options:

 

1. participate in the small/large battles available in every friendly port - action with ZERO OW sailing required

2. open up an outpost in a freeport in enemy territory - action with minimal OW sailing required

 

 

Maybe on PvP 1 you can get in a small battle.  I haven't seen ANYONE in a small battle on PvP 2 in weeks.  And that is a huge, gamebreaking problem - since there is no way to find balanced PvP in OW, small battles are the only fun thing you can do, and they are perpetually empty.  The only reason I stuck with the game as a new player was the fun of small battles, and now they are for all intents and purposes dead on PvP2

[ztrexx]

Sandbox mmorpg's has never been for the casual gamer, they want maximum rewards for minimum effort and when they got it, they will demand more content or leave the game.

[Strake]

Here's my two-gold pieces on this issue. I love this game, specifically the beauty of the ships, the realism of the combat and the potential for an exciting encounter with the enemy in the OW. I have hundreds of hours in the game and currently hold the rank of Master and Commander. I will continue to play the game, but lately have slowed down my play by 75%. Why - because I've reached a plateau where there's not that much to do. I have 14,000 XP to go to the next rank, and am in no hurry to get there. I want to enjoy my ship, but I have no clue how to participate in port battles, and get the feeling a Surprise isn't welcome anyway.

I have no problem with the size of the map or the time it takes to sail between ports, but I look forward to more content down the road where maybe I could do an escort mission, or a spy mission and even a trade mission, something to take me out into the big beautiful map.

Edited March 15, 2016 by Strake

[admin]

This is the correct approach.  The problem isn't the map size, or the ship speed - in fact I think it would be counterproductive to change either much.  I love the huge map... I mean its a scaled down version of the Caribbean, one of the most beautiful places on earth.  Hell, the only time my girlfriend shows any interest in this game is when I am sailing around in the OW and there is some beautiful landscape.

 

The problem is there is nothing meaningful to do on the map.    No chance of random encounters, fun surprises, discoveries, etc.  Just beautiful vistas and looooooots of staring at the screen twiddling your thumbs.

 

The problem here lies in the early access state of the game - because it is early access some decisions are harder to make because it is too early to tell.

 

Creating events tied to your player encounters, privateers chasing you or running from you or building your trading empire (where your traders sail around the world for you transporting goods on the real map) might not work - sometimes because they could break persistence for others sailing with you or against you. You can enter the mission and disappear from the map for others (if they were chasing you), or your traders will definitely get sank just because you were offline.

[ztrexx]

@BluewaterMP

 

fully agree that the issue isn't the size of the map/speed - it's the monotony of the sailing in OW 

 

finding a way to host all the players on one server (i know currently that isn't possible) would resolve a lot of this, including not having enough folks for small/large battles on lower pop servers

Star citizen has added a 4th dimension(time) to their game engine compared to other sandbox mmorpg's and claims that it will make it possible to add micro management intro huge fleetbattles, tho currently there is only room for 24 peeps on each instances, so they are far from proveing its possible, but i hope they are right about it.

[RedTeamSpy]

I think the size of the map and the travel time is about right, however I wouldn't mind seeing the teleport cooldown reduced to maybe 2 hours

 

Honestly I think what we need is not a teleport shortening is that we need another type of teleport.

 

We need a 'get into the action' teleport that teleports you to a random 'frontline' port, so anyone can log in and then sail from their home port press the button and arrive near a random front line then with 10-15 minutes sailing go and hunt an enemy. Would also get more people PVP'ing as the biggest issue with PVP at the moment is that it requires a few hours RL time available to do due to the sailing time. If the game is to have more PVP we need to have a way so that anyone with just 1 hour can go and do PVP, which is almost impossible with the current system.

Edited March 15, 2016 by RedTeamSpy

[Slamz]

Why I like very long open world travel:

 

Right now, on PvP2, France is in a fight with the British. I say "the British" but really it's about 2 clans coming out of Puerto Rico who can field about 30 people total at once. They're not a bad match for France who can turn out about 30 people at once if all three major French clans show up to fight.

 

With long open world travel, it's France vs these 2 clans and it's okay.

 

With instant, unlimited teleports, it could easily turn into France vs the entire British zerg and that would wreck the game.

 

As it stands, the rest of the British team has to choose: fight France or fight someone else. They can't teleport over to fight us and then teleport back to fight the U.S. and then teleport over to hit the pirates and then teleport down to punch Spain. Their zerg power is diminished by the fact that they are restricted in their movement. They are forced to spread out.

 

If you make travel too fast and too easy then this game will be 100% zerg warfare. Small teams will not be viable. (they're barely viable now but you would totally wreck them if you made open world travel quick)

[Atomic Moose]

i understand it is early release and maybe travel will be ok when there is tons of things to do but as of right now there isnt so why not help the players and make travel 2x faster to see if it helps hold players something has to be done or in a few weeks not many will be playing and the realists will wonder why there is no pvp or where is everyone

 

something has to be done traveling right now is game breaking as it is i am sure the dev can see the major drop of players and i cant see why it wouldnt be hard to make traveling 2x a big thing just to see if it works 

 

i feel in in 2-4 there will be another drop of 40-50% players and that will leave only about 300 playing on pvp2 and that wont be enough to make the game playable, everyone say well just move to where the pvp is well that is hard to do as it changes everynite and it takes 2 hrs to sale from mexico to

cabo as i dont have 3rd rates all over my outposts

traveling to battles needs to be sped up period or this game will continue to bleed players 

 

also last nite we did 2 port battles with about 25 people so out of 500 or so playing 5% of the whole server was right there also there was at least 2 other port battles going on at the same time so i bet 20% of the whole server were in 3 spots and people are wondering why there is nothing to do cause there is not enough people and goes directly to keeping players and this travel method is not helping and has to be changed

 

think for just a min how big this map is and 20% of the whole server were in 3 little spots not exactly conducive to much action

Edited March 15, 2016 by Atomic Moose

[Leviathan]

So is it the travel time or the restrictions put on us by the port window the real issue?

 

If we take away the "be here during these two hours every day or lose your ports" restriction the travel time isn't a problem.

Without those you can sail at a pace that is acceptable to you and use outposts to base operations out of to find PvP, econ, etc. Right now it's a battle to get online 4 hours before a port window so you can do those things before teleporting to defend a port. Then once that battle is over you are stuck in home waters which is largely devoid of PvP for another 4 hours leading many people to log off as their time is up for the day/night.

[Enraged Ewok]

I feel like the simplest  solution to this is simply putting an outpost as close as possible to foreign waters. I'm a US PVP2 player with an outpost at Cayo Romano and Bonacca (Bonacca will be changing to Cayman Brac) for exactly this reason. Puts me between 20-40 minutes sailing from well traveled British waters, and whenever I have the hours to craft (or am needed for a port battle closer to home) I can TP back to Tumbado and help my clan. In my opinion, the lack of things to do in game is entirely a player caused issue, because from what I've seen from USA and Britain most of their players sit deep in their own waters until they organize a PB. I rarely see US and Brit players off the north coast of Cuba anymore (outside of Port Battle announcements), and the only time I see the Brits or Dutch in the southwest Caribbean (well inside their own waters and reinforcement zones) is during PBs. At this point I have to sail to Jamaica to even see a Brit, but I'll happily do it even if I have to sink cutters in missions to get their players to come after me.

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

I agree with the OP. Open sea speed needs to go up significantly, wind needs to be less annoying. I would add that if open sea speed was 3-4x they should remove teleports altogether.

This is simple, effective and solves most of the open sea boredom.

Also, cargo weight should reduce speed significantly so that this change doesn't throw the economy off by being able to move 3-4x more stuff in the same time.

[Slamz]

In my opinion, the lack of things to do in game is entirely a player caused issue, because from what I've seen from USA and Britain most of their players sit deep in their own waters until they organize a PB.

 

Yeah, I don't understand the lack of open world PvPers. Pirates and Brits both relied almost entirely on gank-tricks for open world PvP: if you saw one on the open sea, it was because 15 more were waiting in a nearby port or invisible battle. It was uncommon to encounter them just sailing around looking for a fight.

 

We sail around looking for fights all the time but often only encounter Brits in the exact same circumstances as the pirates: they are sitting outside a port with 15 other people hidden in the port or they are rolling super-heavy literally 10000+ BR in a dense cluster towards a port battle and that's it. The people we get to fight end up being the PvErs and mission runners because their "PvPers" are all gank-focused port-huggers.

 

 

Why don't more people just go fight on the open sea?

 

I can't believe it's fear of ship loss because I have to believe most people are like me, which is to say, more durability sitting around then I know how to lose. I haven't put together the parts for a new ship in like 2 weeks because I haven't needed it.

[Mrdoomed]

Ok a series question here. Why does everyone feel they MUST spend 2 or 3 hours traveling somewhere?

Ive been playing since EA and never ever ever saild that far at one time and im clear on the opposite side from where i started with lots of action.

What is this draw tht is making people sail all day ?

[Slamz]

I agree with the OP. Open sea speed needs to go up significantly, wind needs to be less annoying. I would add that if open sea speed was 3-4x they should remove teleports altogether.

This is simple, effective and solves most of the open sea boredom.

Also, cargo weight should reduce speed significantly so that this change doesn't throw the economy off by being able to move 3-4x more stuff in the same time.

 

I dunno. 3x movement speed would have some effects on sighting and attacking people on the open sea, too.

 

And adjusting cargo ships to be 1x speed while combat ships are 3x speed in order to save the economy will also turn cargo ships into sitting ducks. Not sure that's a bad thing, just commenting that it may be another unrealized consequence.

 

 

Personally I think it's fine the way it is. 1 teleport means I can log on, teleport to the warzone of my choosing, fight there and then teleport back home at the end of the night, but I can't zerg around the map.

 

 

Faster movement could actually be detrimental, too. I could see where the temptation to zip off to the next hot zone could actually mean we spend more time chasing each other around the map rather than picking particular areas to have consistent fights in. Imagine the French/Pirate war if France had simply been able to zip up to the gulf coast. A big reason we had that war is because it was inconvenient to move -- you couldn't readily just zip over to start a new base in the Yucatan and we couldn't zip over and live in Louisiana so we both fought it out.

 

Faster travel might just result in a lot more fleeing around the map rather than more fights.

[Atomic Moose]

well mrdoomed we had to sale about 1 hr to get to our port battle last nite then had to sail back that is 2hrs plus the 2 port battles so about 3hrs total got 300xp and didnt see an enemy player so it is very easy to sale 2-3 hrs 

 

go from cabo to tumbato and see how long it takes you just to move a ship and with re guards to pvp this is just like eve there are no fair fights because you cant control the amount of people in the battle so it just ganks like eve wont change until even number of players are per battle

 

and i dont really thing to port timer is the problem you still have to sail to the port you want to go and that is nothing short of 30m travel speed has to be made faster lets just try it and see how it works cause if we dont it wont matter no one will be players cause i feel alot are like me i am at flag captain 75k to go to next level and i am on my last straw cause of the time it takes to do anything

 

also ewok what happens when you port to cayo and are needed by tumbato you are stuck have to sail min of 1h to help by that time it wont matter now you have to choose what you want to do for the nite and hope you are in the right spot that needs to change maybe 2 times a day you can move anywhere with a ship would really help

Edited March 15, 2016 by Atomic Moose

[admin]

the speed will stay - it looks ugly with faster speed

 

I have no problem finding even fights in the open world. There are hotspots of activity which provide for non stop pvp from 1v1 to 20v20. On PvP 1 it is still Hispaniola channel and North coast of Jamaica. Perhaps there are other places as well. 

You can get from 2 to 5 battles per day in varied ships with varied types of enemies against you. Shorter timer solved the problem of enemies piling up on you. 

[Enraged Ewok]

go from cabo to tumbato and see how long it takes you just to move a ship and with re guards to pvp this is just like eve there are no fair fights because you cant control the amount of people in the battle so it just ganks like eve wont change until even number of players are per battle

 

About an hour and a half if you hit the wind correctly. Though this is a trip you only need to make once, assuming you are setting up a new base of operations. One run with a trader to move all your stuff (or a combat ship if you have no mats to move) and TP back, then just cap traders at cabo and send the combat ships you want in the Gulf to Tumbado.

 

 

also ewok what happens when you port to cayo and are needed by tumbato you are stuck have to sail min of 1h to help by that time it wont matter now you have to choose what you want to do for the nite and hope you are in the right spot that needs to change maybe 2 times a day you can move anywhere with a ship would really help

 

If I'm not at Cayo or Bonacca, I TP there before I go to sleep. If my TP is down from getting back to Tumbado, I TP back in the morning. I know when the timers are for the ports around Tumbado, so it's quite easy for me to be nearby when the window is open. All it takes is some thinking ahead and planning.

[DickNixon]

I own a book. Actually, I own several books.

 

Occasionally, I read the words within the books while standing on the quarterdeck, watching the waves roll by.

[BluewaterMP]

The problem here lies in the early access state of the game - because it is early access some decisions are harder to make because it is too early to tell.

 

Creating events tied to your player encounters, privateers chasing you or running from you or building your trading empire (where your traders sail around the world for you transporting goods on the real map) might not work - sometimes because they could break persistence for others sailing with you or against you. You can enter the mission and disappear from the map for others (if they were chasing you), or your traders will definitely get sank just because you were offline.

 

I am comfortable with this answer, thank you.    

 

I truly believe concerns about "nothing to do in the OW" are emminently solvable issues.   It's not like something is fundamentally broken in the game, it is just content that needs to get added (and will over time, acknowledging Early Access).

 

My major point is that devs - if you want the most bang for your buck in terms of return on your time invested in development, I think this is an area that will yield the most rewards.    Throw us a couple of bones for simple, additional OW activities and I think it will quiet a lot of the noise you are hearing from the community on a number of subjects. Just my 2 cents