Patch 9.96 - New conquest, New trading, New ships and other things

[fox2run]

1 hour ago, Stroopwafel said:

The devs have said that they listen to us, the testers, and make changes.  I believe them but as the stats clearly show, they are perhaps listening to the wrong people.  I believe that people want easily available  PvP and perhaps a little challenge in the crafting.  People want to have fun and yet still feel a sense of accomplishment. Instead what we got was even less PvP and unnecessarily complicated crafting.  See the results above...the numbers don't lie. 

The graph is excactly picturing my own experience on the game. Once the timers for joining battles where cut - pvp got harder to get. Needless to say the game got more and more boring down the road... The game itself where VERY GOOD in february and now its below mediocre - hence players are leaving. MAKE PVP EASY AND FUN AGAIN! 

[Jesters-Ink]

13 hours ago, Richard Dryfus said:

The Reality of this patch, and the past changes, is shown in that picture. The game is dying (Which REALLY blows) but unless the DEVs do something, they wont have a player-base anymore.

I don't think its dead yet, a lot of us (and speaking from what I see in our clan) are just coming on to use our crafting hours, waiting for the the crafting system to get a "shove" in the right direction. Give players something worth investing time in and they will play, make it take days instead of hours to acquire required mats and people will go play something more rewarding. I did actually do some sailing today  next up, give us the BP's for the new toys and we can get building

[akd]

21 hours ago, fox2run said:

The graph is excactly picturing my own experience on the game. Once the timers for joining battles where cut - pvp got harder to get. Needless to say the game got more and more boring down the road... The game itself where VERY GOOD in february and now its below mediocre - hence players are leaving. MAKE PVP EASY AND FUN AGAIN! 

This graph proves that the devs made a horrible mistake adding more ships to the game.  As we can see, when there were less ships in the game, there were more players.  Devs must immediately remove all new ships added since EA release and players will flood back to original level.  The graph shows this!

Seriously though, the graph shows fairly steady decline, which suggests that no significant change or addition had any significant effect in the overall decline, except possibly the latest major patch.  You could claim it is the collective effect of many small changes, but the vast majority of changes have been the result of popular request.  Overall, stats suggests that a large number of people bought into the vision of the game, but found the reality of testing and making incremental changes toward that vision less appealing.

Re: latest patch, the issues seem simple:

1. Natural decline in player numbers is reaching a point where the game world is too big.

2. Crafting / region changes reinforced this by giving people incentives to spread out.

3. War supplies undermined intended goal to stimulate RvR PvP.

ROE in my opinion has little to do with it.*  All previous ROE systems have been hated by a substantial portion of the player base because some aspect of them allowed exploitation of instancing vs. open world travel.  Now we have the first ROE in game that can't be critiqued based on its exploitability or inconsistency, and some players are criticizing because it lacks these "features."  They are fewer in number than past critics, but some are very loud and repetitive, and particularly prone to attempting to use reviews / player numbers as a hammer rather than arguing on actual merits.

*I will add the caveat here that the outer circle sucking in AI fleets has destroyed PvP in some areas that should be PvP hotspots because they also happen to be AI fleet hotspots.

Edited November 28, 2016 by akd

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

 

There were more players when 90% of the port battles were empty.

 

 

 

[Richard Dryfus]

Im not trying to shit on NA at all, I love the game and have hundreds of hours invested in it. Im just saddened that the game is getting less and less populated, to the point that I can sail for 4 hours, and not see one player ship in some sections of the map.

I believe the devs can fix it, and as soon as they do Ill be back in full force, I just... got bored.

[fox2run]

2 hours ago, akd said:

This graph proves that the devs made a horrible mistake adding more ships to the game.  As we can see, when there were less ships in the game, there were more players.  Devs must immediately remove all new ships added since EA release and players will flood back to original level.  The graph shows this!

Seriously though, the graph shows fairly steady decline, which suggests that no significant change or addition had any significant effect in the overall decline, except possibly the latest major patch.  You could claim it is the collective effect of many small changes, but the vast majority of changes have been the result of popular request.  Overall, stats suggests that a large number of people bought into the vision of the game, but found the reality of testing and making incremental changes toward that vision less appealing.

Re: latest patch, the issues seem simple:

1. Natural decline in player numbers is reaching a point where the game world is too big.

2. Crafting / region changes reinforced this by giving people incentives to spread out.

3. War supplies undermined intended goal to stimulate RvR PvP.

ROE in my opinion has little to do with it.  All previous ROE systems have been hated by a substantial portion of the player base because some aspect of them allowed exploitation of instancing vs. open world travel.  Now we have the first ROE in game that can't be critiqued based on its exploitability or inconsistency, and some players are criticizing because it lacks these features.  They are fewer in number than past critics, but some are very loud and repetitive, and particularly prone to attempting to use reviews / player numbers as a hammer rather than arguing on actual merits.

While you are laughing, Im playing something else... Games with easy access to fights or excitement. Have fun, dude!

[fox2run]

20 minutes ago, Hodo said:

If all you wanted was easy access to fights, and or excitement then play CSGO, or some other MOBA.  This is not the game for you.  

It was before the small nerdy company of hard core players with too much sparetime came by... As a working guy with a family I need to speed things up a bit. I like naval battles but all the empty cargo stuff really takes too long. Not alone the TS requirements just to see some action and the pretty dull action with little fight in them. Please make PvP easy to get. An empty world is pretty much money out of the window.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Windward Island fox2run. Isn't that far away.

The game shows you the enemy regions. Go there and have fun ?

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Flags provided empty PBs.

I'm still able to raid trade and find ganks yes. Even battles are a rarity outside Small / Large battles yes.

There's a lot of combat around the Port Battles hours.

Another tip: Pay attention to hostility values. The two extremes show you there's action, meaning no hostility in neighboring enemy waters means they are defending. Raising hostility on your alliance means they are on the offensive.

Get out and fight.

[fox2run]

You guys are talking like you didnt play the game in february. I remember an ocean filled by enemy warship... 2 min away from Christiansted there where swedes, pirates, brits and dutch and even frenchies. 2000 players online innumerousbattlesfihtingitout.Sofunitwas.(damnkeyboardsorry)

[Cecil Selous]

To think that we had over 2000 players in february just beacuse we had longer battle join timers is very far fetched. And to think that the decline in playerbase is just due to the new ROE every now and then is even more far fetched. Heck, I think the game with it's current mechanics would also be a blast if we still had over 2000 players.

[fox2run]

I Can only speak for myself. I consider myself an average gamer that have played games for 30 years. When I look back, its the games with replayability and challenge in them that provided me the best experience. The fun factor. If games get too close to real life it's no longer a game but a simulator. In this case some players like to make a simulation out of a game. This attempt will fail completely. No one has the time or the joy of sitting in front of a pc screen for hours on end with nothing to do but looking on a ship on the water. In february the game was very fun. When they cut the joining timers it just collapsed somehow. The fun factor died due to the hardship if going into battle within a reasonable amount of time. ROE does matter.

Edited November 29, 2016 by fox2run

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

I won't disagree with the ganks and ganks that are anti-ganks... rinse and repeat. It has been like that since forever. Even closed OW was like that or worse at times.

But I've seen fleets of 12 3rd and 4th rates sweeping low fleet missions and raising hostility in less than an hour.

Hell, was happening yesterday.

With 1 PvP battle we managed to push hostility back 6%... woohoo !!!

Low level fleet bumrushers were raising it by 20%+ everytime.

 

 

 

 

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Yesterday, roughly 3 hours playing.

- 1 trade interception

- 1 failed PvP interception, ended with PvE

- 1 Small Battle

- 1 counter hostility joint mission ( meaning joined hostility mission of enemy aliance )

Not bad.

[elite92]

8 minutes ago, Hethwill said:

- 1 Small Battle

<3

that cerb was really hard to kill xD

Edited November 29, 2016 by elite92

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

o7

She's a good lady. Still pre-patch.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

I didn't say anything about war supplies. I pointed out that "hostility" values are hints as valuable as many other hints to go out and find some naval action.

But I know for sure Flags and empty port battles are not naval action. They are ego action.

But hey  to each its own good sir.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

I completely agree than it is a mangled mechanic.

Still doesn't, and back to the start of the idea discussion, stop anyone player to search for PvP.

Why are we discussing it ? It was not the starting point. I simply said that hostility meter is a lead to find action, that's all.

cc

[fox2run]

I dont get why you are not listening to ordinary players that has experienced a drop in the PVP - chance...

It's like Saddam Husseins general that told the world everything was under control when the americans was in the streets....:-P

[Twig]

Still the game is far from the promised 2500 simultaneous players playing but the devs can not do something against it.

"There are more than 1500 NPC vessels cruising the map and up to 2500 simultaneous players bringing the Caribbean age of sail to life. "
http://www.navalaction.com/#open-world   - Fight

When you realize to late that youve done something big wrong, maybe it is better to switch the own page and the related promises. Just not to confuse new players.

[MasterChief]

They said "up to 2500",  not 2500 Player right now on the Server, that just means the Server can handle 2500 Players 

Edited December 1, 2016 by Spawnie

[Twig]

still extremely far away from 2500 player^^

 

[Sir Texas Sir]

On 11/29/2016 at 6:17 AM, Hethwill said:

I didn't say anything about war supplies. I pointed out that "hostility" values are hints as valuable as many other hints to go out and find some naval action.

But I know for sure Flags and empty port battles are not naval action. They are ego action.

But hey  to each its own good sir.

I think the only good thing was the flag system told you exactly what port they where attacking or trying to.  The problem we have not counting the war supply issues is that a region is big and it can take some time to hunt down that fleet that is running up the agro and some times we can't find them cause of the missions timers.  Seems they got shorter or something cause they don't seem to stay open 30 mins any more.   What I think they should do is have a ping on the map. Kinda like when the region is contested it flashes from one nation to the other.  Well if there is agro going up near one port of a region than that port does the flash thing.  So you have a better clue what area they are doing the missions at.  That will stimulate more PvP.   When your spending most of your time searching or moving supplies cause they are even more harder to get than your not spending time fighting.   That and while I'm more speaking from PvP2 experience I feel that some nations have a balance issue.  Specially when there are supper alliances that happen and no one fights each other other than one or two groups going at it.   It needs more tweaking I think and I think the War Supplies need a big change.  They should only allow so much turn in at a time and never can flip a port in a few hours.  If I remember right POTBS had where you could only turn in so many in a set time of each type of war supplies and once that type is maxed out you couldn't turn in any more until the next block of time you can turn them in.  It was split up through out the day and gave you time to counter it.  The other thing is port battle times.  Every battle we had with the US against the Pirates has been around 6pm CST for me.  That is when I'm getting home and that is way below the old prime times we did port battles on the old system around 8-10pm CST.   So they have the numbers for that time and we can't field a full team or even half a team we are going to loose every time.  On the old system we where able to keep Port Battles to times we could field a team to fight back.  The current port battle system actually does't help the small nations it hurts them.

And I hate to say this and it will prob mean I won't play as much but they prob should just merg all three servers so there is a decent player base.  Right now you had one server to give you a good test with larger numbers and one to test with low pop, but now it's getting more and more both are low pop.   The people that will leave are going to leave any way cause they aren't happy. Though I do think the locatoin and provider needs to be looked at.  As not every one has the same internet and the EU server has the worse ping I have had of any game when going to a EU server base from where I'm located at and it isn't even high traffic game like some of the others I play on.  If they take the resources of the servers and put them for not into one good located server it would help a lot of those that play with high pings or connection issues and make the pings better all around.  I know several SEA players that can't play on the EU server cause it will put there pinges way over 600 and more.  I'm sorry if you guys keep saying ping doesn't matter that prob cause your not the ones having connection and packet lost issues.   There is more to connections than just ones ping.  I can play at 120-130 and have when I started, but that was back when they had to mirror the server cause of the high population and we don't have that now, but my EU ping is 140-160 and I now get very bad spikes of 400-600.  That means where ever they have the server if it's not the same location as before there is issues crossing.   I will pretty much be stuck to doing small battles and OW and left out of any Port battles are large battles with that speed.  Cause I'm not going to wait 2 seconds to see where my cannons that I fired may or may not of hit.  Takes the fun right out of the game.  Though I'll still test the ECON and other game mechanics if there was a server merge.  It's not like this is the only game I play any way.

 

 

[Fenris]

14 hours ago, Twig said:

still extremely far away from 2500 player^^

 

All afraid to lose their precious pixels ?

[Twig]

4 hours ago, Fenris said:

All afraid to lose their precious pixels ?

How did you came to that conclusion? makes no sense at all.