Idea's to boost PVP and move ships, save time.

[Rebel Witch]

I can tell that the Dev's and all of us are struggling more and more with the reality that plagues this game. Game balance and encouraging healthy PVP. Lets face it, if PVP is dead in this game, the game will die or have a very low population. PVP spurs activity and the economy and all kinds of other activity between players. So here is another attempt at solving some issues.

The open world is vast and it is very hard often times to find PVP, or enemy players to fight. The vast open world also poses challenges to many players about the amount of time spent sailing, people are getting bored sailing for hours just to move a ship or goods. Here is an idea to solve both problems.

1. Create "Fast Forward" spots (FF spot) in the open world for players to sail to. Once at the FF spot you would wait lets say 2 minutes and then be teleported to another FF spot of your choice. You would get an option to choose which FF spot you wish to travel too once you reach the first FF spot. What this does is it helps make travel faster for players. However there is a big risk involved.

The risk is that FF spots can be guarded or camped by other players. While that risk may cause players to just sail the long way, that risk will spur PVP because you will hopefully have players fighting over FF spots. Some FF spots will be high volume traffic area's so you may see a new way for pirates to get more activity too. 

One of this games great assets is its wide open world. We dont want to lose that either. So giving players more options is key to a games success. Players can still sail the long way, it will be safer but take more of your real time. However players will have the option to go to a FF spot too to save time but at risk of being spotted and chased by enemy ships or pirates.

I know many players will say that FF spots just sound ridiculous or unrealistic. Lets not forget this is a game not real sailing boats and players only have an amount of time to play each day. Some more than others. The key to a games success is giving players options without breaking the game or ruining it for others. FF spots open up big options to all players and i do not think it will ruin other aspects of the game.

Lets say you have a FF spot between Kingston port royal and pedro cay for example. You need to move your ship to Bensalem and the closest FF spot is south between bensalem and turneffe. Using those FF spots would save tremendous amounts of time moving your ship and goods. However players would also use FF spots to hunt ships for PVP. Some players would be the hunters, others would go to find those hunters at the FF spots. I believe you will get lots of PVP around these FF spots and the PVP would be random, the last thing we need is world of warship perfect balance fights every fight right?

FF spots would allow for the opening of the pacific ocean and perhaps Europe and Africa and the entire world! Perhaps you would need to use multiple FF spots to go very long distances. Again that allows for greater travel distance at shorter time but at some risk, more player options etc.

 

One thing that concerns me is that recent game changes (taking away AI fleets for us to fight around friendly ports, taking away mission options around friendly ports) it seems we are losing key game options for pve while the devs try to find ways to boost pvp, by herding players to battle area's. I think that is hurting the game. I say bring all that back, bring back more AI fleets, bring back more mission options. Giving players more options encourages activity. The more players are forced to do things, it turns them off.

 

I believe FF spots will help but it does not solve the problem of giving players more options on moving ships. I strongly propose Dev's give players the option to "send" ships to ports of choice. Which would make your ship under AI control and it would then sail manually to the destination port with your name tag on it so other players know its a player ship too. Lets say you know there are port battles coming up in a region and you do not have time to sail ships that far. With the option  to "send" a ship via AI control you can move the ship however you lose control of it and it can be easy prey for other enemy players to fight. Again that player option, but with risk. All of that spurs game activity.

 

Hope you like my suggestions.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Rebel Witch

[Rychu Karas]

it can boost only gankers not pvp.

In my opinion atm there is too much room for so few players.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Rychu Karas

[Mrdoomed]

When our server was 900+ the world didnt seem vast at all. In fact it was unrealistically crowded imo. I think the map as it is is perfect and that 500 players is abut the perfect amount.

Now before yall lose your minds hold on. The world IS big and there should be emptiness that a player can use to be alone or go around trouble etc. The new regional system acually encouraged players to " own" a region and stay and that is a step in the right direction .  The world wont be vast or devoid of pvp when players are anchored to a "home region" and and enemies fight for it smuggle in it raid in it etc. 

I personally do not want it like it was with 1000 players where i couldn't even leave one of my eight ports ( including mort) without 30 enemy sitting there. I like the big world and i surely dont want groups of 30 going FFWD mode.

Now all that said , YES you are right but only currently .  The real problem is A no population on server (mine is below 90) and B thestupid rookie zone is where most players are so of course there is no pvp anywhere and C THE PROBLEM I CALLED OUT MONTHS AGO.....if you give everyone free teleports at will and no need to ever acually BE ON THE WATER  then nobody will be on the water .  Try hards simply afk sail in free cutters to set up an outpost then teleport thier ships there for pbs.

I warned them they was creating a PB simulator and was ignored by everyone because at the time PBs where easy to set up and do. Now that they take some effort everyone is seeing what i said comming true.

Bottom line: we dont need fast travel, we need travel period and a real reason to do it.

PS many many many players myself included have suggested hundreds of ideas to bring the open world to life. maybe soon they will listen.

[Guest]

Reducing the amount of servers doesn't stop the server depopulation..

[St0nkingByte]

Even on PVP2, which is relatively low population, the problem isn't so much the size of the world but the lack of information.

Being in a very active clan I could pretty much PVP practically every time I'm on but that's largely because we are sharing information about where the activity is and what we should be prioritizing. We also have some members who are very aggressive about making PVP happen. Add in raising hostility and it could be (if I didn't spend so much time trading to keep my $$ up) non-stop action for me.

The problem is if you are not in a clan and on a Teamspeak with people who are sharing information you would have no idea what areas are hot-beds of PVP unless you stumble into it. The hostility system helps but with the size of the OW even when we are raising hostility against another nation with both sides doing PVE missions in the same county at the same time we rarely, if ever, actually run into those opposing fleets.

Maybe if we had some real-time messaging or some hints as to where those fleet PVE battles are happening it would help generate more PVP and assist those not in a clan to better understand where the action is.

If live information seems to gamey or unbalanced perhaps placing markers on the map at each reset showing where OW PVP battles happened the prior day would help people clue into where the action is.

[Mrdoomed]

Well if people would utilize the faction chat that would help. 

Not sure how other factions work but pirate faction chat is abuzz with enemy activities . ....well it was when there was anyone on the server.

[Rebel Witch]

I admit that my idea for FF points in NA is influenced by my 10 years playing EVE Online. Like stargates, where much of the pvp of EVE is generated, FF points in NA will  draw ships like Bugs to a lightbulb. They will not only be congregation area's for all kinds of PVP, they will also allow for the opening up of the entire world for travel. 

FF points could be a network. So lets say you want to travel from England to Kingstom Jamaica. You would have to follow a certain path of FF Points along the way. YOu would not be able to just go from A to B in the case of super long distance. FF Points would also NOT remove the ability to do what we do now, that is sail the long way. So players will just have more options to travel.

I am hoping to see more support for this idea because the more i think about it, the more I like it. 

 

I also hope to one day see the Dev's allow player groups to form their own nation-states. So if they create places like south America, Africa, Asia etc. they could create ports that could be conquered by players nation-states and their navies. These player states would be in complete control by the player owners, have their own color on the map, they could have a leader and make policies for their ports and have to defend the ports etc. But expanding the map is an impossible idea unless you have some kind of fast travel because players are not going to manually sail for hours and hours and hours and hours in OW to go long distances (like Caribbean to Hawaii for example) for one trade shipment. 

Edited November 22, 2016 by Rebel Witch

[Rychu Karas]

Let the pvp event show up. it sounds like a nice possible pvp congregation

Edited November 22, 2016 by Rychu Karas