Forthcoming shipbuilding changes [Heavily Moderated]

[Lord Vicious]

we lost 50% of active players in last 2 week

 

lets lose another 50% with a ship wipe

[Cmdr RideZ]

33 minutes ago, Lord Vicious said:

we lost 50% of active players in last 2 week

 

lets lose another 50% with a ship wipe

I believe the ship wipe was part of the reason already why 50% from testers left the game.

I recommend that you just say that materials will be compensated.

 

When will be the game released btw?

[Red Jack Walker]

7 hours ago, Lord Vicious said:

we lost 50% of active players in last 2 week

 

lets lose another 50% with a ship wipe

Vicious is right. I decided to stop playing (after more than a year of everyday activity) for many reasons and wipe is not among them.

1) crafting is becoming more and more time consuming and risky. It is killing my PVP & PVE time and grant me no more access to all ships (5 non craftable ships atm...more of them in the future).

2) coastal batteries: they are cool, but they limit good PVP targets (with "scaled" distances between ports is really difficult to attack an enemy ship without being under their threat).

3) port battles: they are becoming more and more complex military operations...PB will be day after day restricted to bigger clans with the best ships.

4) game is becoming heavily "elite & RvR oriented", more complex and time consuming everyday...so as a small clan player with couple of hours avaliable to play everyday, I can't really find a role in this game anymore, or get enough satisfaction from it (things getting even harder for solo players).

So my decision has absolutely nothing to do with ships wipe.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Red Jack Walker
needed to underline more few words in my post

[Magnum]

I have given it my all for a few days and I find the crafting system overly complex for most players as it is. But it is the need to find, transport and store the extra materials that is the weight dragging on me.

The increased difficulty building custom ships is going to kill PvP even more as no one will want to risk their good ships simply because it's a week or more hauling to replace it.

[JollyRoger1516]

9 hours ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

I believe the ship wipe was part of the reason already why 50% from testers left the game.

I recommend that you just say that materials will be compensated.

 

When will be the game released btw?

in december-january according to their plan.

Ship wipe has little for me to do with watching the game from the sidelines. I have 1250 hours in this game and now I am writing my BA which means even though I only work on call and usually ahve lots of time I can't sit in front of the PC 10 hours a day. It took about a week for me to feel the full impact of this. Not being able to sail cargo out early meant I lost a few hauls and immediately I was unable to craft for another few days yet having to constantly be there for hostility, resources and screening which is rendered useless due to recent mechanic based tactics. Bear in mind currently I have the ships to 'somewhat' counter this. The only real worry I have about the wipe is the fact that then we don't have the ships to counter it. Yet dealing with the current time necessity ahs rendered me unable to play significantly which means having 1 hour is worthless hence I don't even bother to paly in the first place anymore.

Also the idea that a ship with 1 mod would in any way face a golden one on equal terms is something the devs have thought out and I simply can't see it. In addition the devs are hell bent on getting rid of the ships of the line which remain my favourite ships. I won't have a reason to stay when the I am forced onto ships I do not enjoy for more then once a week.

Simple solution would ahve been to let people put as many mods as they can on a ship (as long as they don't conflict with each other location wise) - that would be actual balance. Make mods unloosable and every ship a 1 dura for more ship care. Get rid of the battle rating in port battles to see more variety. Don't lock ships/blueprints behind undesired events - this is not a free to play game we would like to experience all ships and blueprints equally without a massive grind or having to play undesired events first. (Bear in mind there are those that enjoy the combination of trader/crafter - there is no way for them to obtain a blueprint or the santa cecilia (why that one was locked I still don't know...)

[Ixal]

Hauling around all materials I need already eats up most of my playtime. My interest in playing the game of gank and be ganked in the time that is left (or when I lack the fine woods to do anything) after that is waning. Especially as combat now is just an endless turning to rake. And if I dont want a gank I am left with fighting NPCs which means either sailing around for an hour to find an NPC fleet which is in my range (and also fun to fight) or doing the same combat missions over and over again.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Ixal

[Neverdead Ned]

Basically Naval Action  has been converted from a game into a sim.   Don't get me wrong, some sims can be fun but you lost many if not most of the gamers.  The "Action" in the game title has become a misnomer and kinda ironic.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Stroopwafel

[admin]

On 11/11/2016 at 0:52 AM, Lord Vicious said:

we lost 50% of active players in last 2 week

lets lose another 50% with a ship wipe

Online will drop even further closer to release. The closer wipe is the lower online will be. We need to test things that cannot be tested once game is released. 

[JollyRoger1516]

1 hour ago, admin said:

Online will drop even further closer to release. The closer wipe is the lower online will be. We need to test things that cannot be tested once game is released. 

I totally understand that but the reason so many leave is because we don't see you moving back when you see a strong negative reaction from people. It might not involve the whole 50% but even when 'only' 25% are unhappy I think you should consider not just writing them off. Lately exploits or at least what a considerable amount of people consider as such have been allowed (my main reason for hybernation), ship building though in testing phase has been made a massive time/fun sink and we hear no changes to it that would fix that, PvE and PvP are currently both troublesome to get and not very enjoyable/too risky for the outcome.Also your money drain ideas have all just hit the small guys. Those with 10mil+ are sitting there making money by the simply fact that they are the only ones still handling the top resources.

The aspect of testing has become very frustrating lately with many people after a year of testing no longer being willing to wait too long for fixes or to constantly warn of game killing changes (blueprint system - this has been fought at every point in the forum by large quantities yet you still push for this new direction). Don't get me wrong I think you're doing your very best and I do or at least have thoroughly enjoyed your game. I jsut think that the current attitude towards losing players in testing is sth you can't afford. I quite frankly don't believe in them all coming back or the game getting a massive influx on release. Game's had that myth before and I haven't yet seen it actually happen.

[Red Jack Walker]

1 hour ago, JollyRoger1516 said:

I totally understand that but the reason so many leave is because we don't see you moving back when you see a strong negative reaction from people. It might not involve the whole 50% but even when 'only' 25% are unhappy I think you should consider not just writing them off. Lately exploits or at least what a considerable amount of people consider as such have been allowed (my main reason for hybernation), ship building though in testing phase has been made a massive time/fun sink and we hear no changes to it that would fix that, PvE and PvP are currently both troublesome to get and not very enjoyable/too risky for the outcome.Also your money drain ideas have all just hit the small guys. Those with 10mil+ are sitting there making money by the simply fact that they are the only ones still handling the top resources.

The aspect of testing has become very frustrating lately with many people after a year of testing no longer being willing to wait too long for fixes or to constantly warn of game killing changes (blueprint system - this has been fought at every point in the forum by large quantities yet you still push for this new direction). Don't get me wrong I think you're doing your very best and I do or at least have thoroughly enjoyed your game. I jsut think that the current attitude towards losing players in testing is sth you can't afford. I quite frankly don't believe in them all coming back or the game getting a massive influx on release. Game's had that myth before and I haven't yet seen it actually happen.

Amen.

[Ixal]

One possible (not sure if it would really work, just an idea) solution to the crafting time sink would maybe be if we could pay other players to transport goods for us like in EvE.

Alternatively, let people chart ships to transport stuff between all outposts a players have, but those ships are actually travelling on the OW and can be intercepted by other players, so there is risk (AI escorts cost extra).

[Destraex]

1 hour ago, JollyRoger1516 said:

I totally understand that but the reason so many leave is because we don't see you moving back when you see a strong negative reaction from people. It might not involve the whole 50% but even when 'only' 25% are unhappy I think you should consider not just writing them off. Lately exploits or at least what a considerable amount of people consider as such have been allowed (my main reason for hybernation), ship building though in testing phase has been made a massive time/fun sink and we hear no changes to it that would fix that, PvE and PvP are currently both troublesome to get and not very enjoyable/too risky for the outcome.Also your money drain ideas have all just hit the small guys. Those with 10mil+ are sitting there making money by the simply fact that they are the only ones still handling the top resources.

The aspect of testing has become very frustrating lately with many people after a year of testing no longer being willing to wait too long for fixes or to constantly warn of game killing changes (blueprint system - this has been fought at every point in the forum by large quantities yet you still push for this new direction). Don't get me wrong I think you're doing your very best and I do or at least have thoroughly enjoyed your game. I jsut think that the current attitude towards losing players in testing is sth you can't afford. I quite frankly don't believe in them all coming back or the game getting a massive influx on release. Game's had that myth before and I haven't yet seen it actually happen.

I think the Devs need to make decisions sometimes based on their own common sense. The community has input that can influence but that does not mean they have control over every decision the devs make or that the community are right about game mechanic directions.  Only the devs see the actual stats in game from every change they make. 

What I see personally in a lot of cases is community members simply arguing as one would lobby government for a vested interest. What I am trying to say is that most people are bias towards an in game faction, role they like to play or other consideration. I think the devs are doing just fine trying to test a whole bunch of things before release. They know that it means a lot of people won't necessarily play all the time. But they need to do it to see what works before release. 

I love the list of things they intend and the direction of the game. Cannot wait for the next big patch. There are some things I do not like, travel times for instance. But each feature builds on another and eventually they will all come together with a cherry on top I hope. The population will not stabilize until final release, especially as most people seem to want to play the game rather than test it. People seem to think that they are playing an early access game that is like WOWs or some other game that is actually not alpha or beta but final release candidate and fully featured. That is why they care about population numbers so much. This is not a fully featured game yet. It is not in the final stages of balancing. The devs list of things they are trying to add still tells me that. The mechanics are not as simple as WOWs or WOT or even a simple simulator ether. This game is massively ambitious. An open world with good physics in combat and realistic immersive 18c ships. A game that has an economy, assorted sloop\frigate\SOL and other specialised ship combat. A game that has good AI compared to other games. Some of these things are a little broken at the moment. But the fine tuning will probably come after all the features are in and gelling together.  When you consider what other games with larger dev teams like star citizen have done, this game is already stellar and a stand out in my book.

I have tested games where we have literally only been allowed to test one tiny focus of the game at a time. That is the real hard core testing. The repetitive boring grind style testing. Not fun at all. We are doing that here and yes we are doing it after a year. Everybody has an opinion about how long a game should take to make. But the devs I am sure are not lazing around in the sun. They will be working as hard as they can to make the game a success. We either have to believe and be content to test and give feedback without expectation or move on until release. I personally believe that in order to test things and move the schedule as fast as possible that informing the community while good for public relations is a luxury during testing phases. We have to roll with the punches until release. I am pretty sure personally that on release most who purchased this will be downloading it again to see how it turned out and if it hits the spot for an age of sail NAVAL ACTION game.

My 2c

[Lord Vicious]

10 hours ago, admin said:

Online will drop even further closer to release. The closer wipe is the lower online will be. We need to test things that cannot be tested once game is released. 

 

You not get, you killed the game, not cause wipe, but cause everything is x10 time consuming and there is no pvp around, mechanics are worst than previous patch pve pvp crafting pb etc etc.     

 

Ppl are not playng becouse of wipe, we have ships to throw away, ppl are not playng becouse run for 6h and find nothing is not fun

You can accept this and fix it, or close yourself in a white castle pretening nothing of this ever happened, is all fine, no mistakes all is fine,  tbh at this point i not even care anymore.       You did an awesome game 1 year and half ago, 6 months ago, now no more, stop live in the past, you did great before, now you dont. deal with it

 

80% of steam bad reviews are made by ppl with 300-2000 hours into the game, so ppl unhappy of how the game developed not ppl with 10h that not like the game.  You should get a lesson from it instead deny

 

 

Wipe is just the cherry on top of a crap pie

Edited November 12, 2016 by Lord Vicious

[Lord Vicious]

8 minutes ago, Hodo said:

Being a bit of a drama queen?  No really, you are over reacting.  This is beta, we are here to test stuff, this is a test phase, if it isn't good it will get changed, adjusted or just dropped.  

 

The crafting system is something that was just a place holder, like the UI, it was going to get changed, they told us this for months, yet when it came people started crying like you kicked their dog.  

 

I play this game since february 2015 so wash  your mouth. i have 6000 h in the game,          And my clan went from 30 ppl on to 5,    everything is worst then 6 months ago, if you are a noob that cant understand it is your issue.

 

I cared much more then you about the game,  But now i am exausted to fight wind mills, fanboys,  ppl that clap clap at everything even when is completely wrong,  this PAtch made all aspect of the game worst, more boring, more time consuming and killed that few hardcore players that where willing to stick playng this alpha from now to the release.

 

They not changed anything a pb inside work exactly like  april, beside the pve farming of aggression of  exploit of warsupply bomb    so same mechanics, x10 more time consuming,  and much less pb.  and much less pb control, since now it takes 2 day to start and every random join it making impossible to organize a pb.

 

Crafting? is same as before, beside you need fine "random obtained" materials, haul all to a region for bonus,   get liveoak with alt accounts since only liveoak farm is in usa territory,  SAME AS BEFORE,  beside some new bonuses that are more OP then all previous gold modules combined.  x10 time for obtain it.     

 

and i can go on and on about towers, forts,  rule of engagement,  super circle etc etc.    This patch need a Noble prize since it managed to touch all aspect of the game in WORST , the proof? ppl vanished, and even superhardcore players like me are done.      (i have 8 accounts to give you an idea so hardly a guy who didnt support the game like it or quit for a bad patch )

 

is not fun anymore. is a damn full time job, wich i can do but 99% of ppl dont and are not willing to.    They keep remaking the same things and over and over they make it worst, and instead fix it, they announce the next system.

 

is almost 1 year and half we wait for pirate mechanics, pirates rule of engagements. Nothing. 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2016 by Lord Vicious

[PaladinFX]

12 hours ago, Destraex said:

I think the Devs need to make decisions sometimes based on their own common sense. The community has input that can influence but that does not mean they have control over every decision the devs make or that the community are right about game mechanic directions.  Only the devs see the actual stats in game from every change they make. 

What I see personally in a lot of cases is community members simply arguing as one would lobby government for a vested interest. What I am trying to say is that most people are bias towards an in game faction, role they like to play or other consideration. I think the devs are doing just fine trying to test a whole bunch of things before release. They know that it means a lot of people won't necessarily play all the time. But they need to do it to see what works before release. 

I love the list of things they intend and the direction of the game. Cannot wait for the next big patch. There are some things I do not like, travel times for instance. But each feature builds on another and eventually they will all come together with a cherry on top I hope. The population will not stabilize until final release, especially as most people seem to want to play the game rather than test it. People seem to think that they are playing an early access game that is like WOWs or some other game that is actually not alpha or beta but final release candidate and fully featured. That is why they care about population numbers so much. This is not a fully featured game yet. It is not in the final stages of balancing. The devs list of things they are trying to add still tells me that. The mechanics are not as simple as WOWs or WOT or even a simple simulator ether. This game is massively ambitious. An open world with good physics in combat and realistic immersive 18c ships. A game that has an economy, assorted sloop\frigate\SOL and other specialised ship combat. A game that has good AI compared to other games. Some of these things are a little broken at the moment. But the fine tuning will probably come after all the features are in and gelling together.  When you consider what other games with larger dev teams like star citizen have done, this game is already stellar and a stand out in my book.

I have tested games where we have literally only been allowed to test one tiny focus of the game at a time. That is the real hard core testing. The repetitive boring grind style testing. Not fun at all. We are doing that here and yes we are doing it after a year. Everybody has an opinion about how long a game should take to make. But the devs I am sure are not lazing around in the sun. They will be working as hard as they can to make the game a success. We either have to believe and be content to test and give feedback without expectation or move on until release. I personally believe that in order to test things and move the schedule as fast as possible that informing the community while good for public relations is a luxury during testing phases. We have to roll with the punches until release. I am pretty sure personally that on release most who purchased this will be downloading it again to see how it turned out and if it hits the spot for an age of sail NAVAL ACTION game.

My 2c

Well said!

With over 2500 hrs in the game so far I could easily let myself get upset with the changes in patch 9.96 that have slowed the game down, created more time commitment required and caused issues with port battles BUT what I come back to is:

1. I love that the devs are trying to create an awesome age of sail game.

2. When the PvP action happens its still as fun as always for me.

3. I have faith that the devs are committed to making this game work and at release it will be what all us hardcore PvPers are looking for combined with an effective econ/trade/crafting side.

4. I bought this game knowing it was EA/Alpha and expected changes and that there might be things along the way that the devs wanted to test that might make the game less fun in the short term to reach the best game long term.

5. I have always accepted that I am a Tester for the devs; this game is not finished yet!

 

So, I certainly will not be quitting, I will be supporting the devs with my commitment to the game as a tester and just doing my best to have fun with a good group of guys to play the game with along the way. I don't see any point wasting my energy on whining about it all when the game is still in development mode! Better to try and give constructive feedback to the devs in this forum where I can and hope I can make some small difference in helping this game to turn out awesome!

[Alex Connor]

29 minutes ago, Donnerschock said:

You really don't get it.

 

This game is a MMO. That means this game lives and dies with its playerbase. No playerbase - no game. the player amount already sunk down so much that this game will never come back. The hardcore gamer that played the game till this patch are pissed and lost hope. We don't get any new players in this game, it just become to slow and boring. It's to late for announcing to change things and even if they would most of us wouldn't believe anymore, we want to see it ingame.

All this doom and gloom...

You haven't been around long enough to see the population rise and fall through sea trials and the first two complete wipes of the open sea. Trust me, has been much worse, and Naval Action has come back stronger each time. 

[JollyRoger1516]

As much as I don't agree with the words used - the content of Vicious' post is correct. ROYAL probably the third biggest clan of the British nation with over 100 members currently struggles to get 10-15 of them online at once of which some are just making a 1 hour economy trip and bugger off afterwards. I can't blame them - I do the same. Throw a bit of stuff into the warehouse and hope that there is somebody left in hte clan to actually use it. (Yet even then fine woods are not enough ). I completely agree to Destraex post - things need to be tested, it will take time and not all people are going to like it. But I also believe that we don't have the time anymore and that the playerbase will only recover very slowly should it ever do so in the first place. We have been requesting quality of life improvements such as ship transfer or sending out trader ships (open world attackable) to save everybodies time and enable action and defense everywhere on this map (given you got an outpost there). However the devs reacted to that request by requiring massive amounts of time of us. This seems like development directed in the completely different direction and people who genuinely want to test struggle to cope with that. I'm sure the devs had the best intentions and weren't just going against player judgement (some of us have been playing games for over 20 years now - I am starting to believe we might occassionally actually be able to judge a scenario even for a development direction) but quite clearly it backfired big time...

@Alex Connor - I have been and no it hasn't been much worse. You also forgot an essential difference there - people were anxious for the changes. Hybernation was rather short (like in February) but people were still active ingame and on the forums. Now however these players have left or wait out the game till release and the remainders are not that happy about what will hit them (see shipcrafting). In addition we now severly lack new content as for the alst 3 months no new ships ahve been introduced that were actually properly available. Yes the Santa Cecilia, L'Ocean, Agamemnon, Heavy Rattle and gunboat are nwe content but only few can craft them and only few have them - lack of new content is starting to wear people down just as much!

Edited November 13, 2016 by JollyRoger1516

[Red Jack Walker]

53 minutes ago, JollyRoger1516 said:

As much as I don't agree with the words used - the content of Vicious' post is correct. ROYAL probably the third biggest clan of the British nation with over 100 members currently struggles to get 10-15 of them online at once of which some are just making a 1 hour economy trip and bugger off afterwards. I can't blame them - I do the same. Throw a bit of stuff into the warehouse and hope that there is somebody left in hte clan to actually use it. (Yet even then fine woods are not enough ). I completely agree to Destraex post - things need to be tested, it will take time and not all people are going to like it. But I also believe that we don't have the time anymore and that the playerbase will only recover very slowly should it ever do so in the first place. We have been requesting quality of life improvements such as ship transfer or sending out trader ships (open world attackable) to save everybodies time and enable action and defense everywhere on this map (given you got an outpost there). However the devs reacted to that request by requiring massive amounts of time of us. This seems like development directed in the completely different direction and people who genuinely want to test struggle to cope with that. I'm sure the devs had the best intentions and weren't just going against player judgement (some of us have been playing games for over 20 years now - I am starting to believe we might occassionally actually be able to judge a scenario even for a development direction) but quite clearly it backfired big time...

@Alex Connor - I have been and no it hasn't been much worse. You also forgot an essential difference there - people were anxious for the changes. Hybernation was rather short (like in February) but people were still active ingame and on the forums. Now however these players have left or wait out the game till release and the remainders are not that happy about what will hit them (see shipcrafting). In addition we now severly lack new content as for the alst 3 months no new ships ahve been introduced that were actually properly available. Yes the Santa Cecilia, L'Ocean, Agamemnon, Heavy Rattle and gunboat are nwe content but only few can craft them and only few have them - lack of new content is starting to wear people down just as much!

+10000000000

[JobaSet]

On 11/12/2016 at 3:51 AM, admin said:

Online will drop even further closer to release. The closer wipe is the lower online will be. We need to test things that cannot be tested once game is released. 

That is the kind of thinking Brexit and Clinton used, how did that go for them, I left almost 2 weeks ago not seen one not even an utter mention of how to fix "Naval Ship Building Sim"   PVP is gone you broke it, even before the last patch and you made it worse with the last patch no amount of hot fixing is going to bring back PVP.  No one is going to pvp when it takes 2 or 3 weeks to build a 1st rate and about a week to make a 4th rate and both can be killed by lower ships just stern camping.  I mean come on I beat a Conny is a gun ship and never got shot once that was the end for me.  How is that real lol.  Your game is busted.  None of the hard pvp'er care about a wipe its your care bear crew that cares.  And you have made it a "JOB" for them to build anything and not even 1% can build the ships they want, so they left with no one to hunt I left.  Hell I am spending my time playing a Stupid golf game that is free and its not even a hard choice.  Best part about this golf game, is if I leave my bag to go hit a ball out of the rough, my opponent dose not break all my clubs(crew kills).    

Edited November 13, 2016 by JobaSet

[Nielsnnk]

(months of effort required)

this is not a smart idea we need to stop working and play this game full time if you want a ship.

[fox2run]

It's the first game that take the fun stuff out during development...

Please keep the fun stuff and make action easier to get. Since February this game has been in a decline on the action side...

[Lord Vicious]

Development means find a method and enhanche, polish it, not change it over and over, becouse you never gonna  tune it, if continuous change.  Is impossible if every time all change in same moment, economy, rules of engagement port battle pvp.

 

Se current crafting, instead fix resource spawn around the world, (aka give some liveoak in other regions)  they already announced next crafting, thats disperse also development work they spend months making a thing and then discard it totally thats show clearly that they not have clear ideas/path

 

The combat got tuned pretty well for a year and half and improved, until 5-6 months ago where instead improve it declined,     

Same for modules i remmeber powder monkeys giving 10-15% reload was too much, i remmeber getting +45% reload 1 year ago, took over a year to find a great tune to 5, now? 25,% pointless,  cant waste 3 modules for +10% reload, when a port bonus give the same.

 

They always go from 0 to 100,    and instead fix it, they change completely the system again or erase all down to nothing, where all pretty much use the same 4-5 modules and thats it.     25 modules in game only 5 are used in pvp     for tank/dps        and 5-6 for boarding

Edited November 13, 2016 by Lord Vicious

[Neverdead Ned]

Before I purchase a game on Steam, I carefully read the reviews.  If you had asked me to review Naval Action before the patch, I probably would have been fair but favorable over all.  If you ask me today, I'd give the game a big thumbs down and it could possibly cost a few people not to buy the game in the future.  I am sure that I'm not alone.  So the devs can continue to be dismissive if they so chose, but beware of the reviewer!  

[Destraex]

Stroopwafel, but you will be fair and post a steam review AFTER release right? Does steam have a "alpha/beta/early access" tag for reviews?

Because Stroopwafel you are right. If people are posting reviews as if they are reviewing a finished product then the whole gaming industry is in trouble. Steam needs to fix that so people understand which reviews are of a half finished game.

[Rramsha]

Quoting myself from another post... When the game finally converts to the two crafting qualities, as mentioned by Admin, they can always decrease the requirements of common ships allowing them to be built faster and use less resources, therefore less sailing for crafters and better prices for buyers. Remember the intent is for the majority of ships to be common (lower) crafted with very few  ELITE master-craft ships sprinkled around for those with the time or money. The Master Craft ships would be for those willing to take the time and money needed to craft them, this is creating an every day ship market with an endgame ship market. While in the real world, the quality is more dependent on the shipyard and materials used such as the current game version has. I doubt shipyards built bad ships and really good ships in the manner that the game currently works, warships were just too expensive to build in the real world.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Rramsha