open water is booooring

[ZenTex]

So what to do if one has reached the maximum rank and want to do something different?

 

Due to my timezone, pvp unfortunately is a non issue. But hey, PvE can be fun too, right?

I'm bored of PvE combat missions though. So why not raid the enemy territories in search for loot? As a dutchman the spanish borders are quite nearby so lets look there for AI traders to cap for interesting loot.

So I ventured westward hoping for rich loot. Alas. An more than an hour spent and i found 2 AI fleets, both far to powerful. Maybe the eastern border has more opportunities?

2 hours later i managed to catch and board a whopping 2 AI trader lynxes carrying contraband, While the cargo in itself was not too bad, considering the time spent it was a pure waste of time. But disliking missions i persevered.

now, about 12 hours of gameplay further i caught the astonishing amount of 3 contraband traders and 1 regular trader. Some more were found but the AI bunched up in such a way that they were all in cover of AI combat fleets. Why oh why would i ever stop doing missions to make money? Why would i risk my ship going into enemy territory to catch enemy traders when there's so few of them and give little reward while the risk of running into enemy players is potentially so much greater?

Why is there an open world anyway? To waste our time in sailing from A to B?

 

 

 

[The Spud]

Well, at the moment we're somwhat low populated, to the point that I feel if something is going down on the other side of the map (PB), the rest of the world even feels more empty. But to doubt the point of having an OW is a bit far fetched. It allows for tactics, interception, running, picking your battles.

Its a source of massive epicness, like whenever I see I massive fleet of friendly ships all going for the same objective, you know its about to get real. And at the same time its indeed boring when you can't find anything but traders and massive AI fleets. These realy epic battles every now and then makes up for plenty of boring sailing.

We can only hope for an influx of returning/new players to make more epic battles and less boring sailing.

[pietjenoob]

Well having closeby borders does not mean close by enemy's (players). If you really want to go and hunt. Then u need to move to capitals and heavily used shiping lanes like gauyaguaryare because of the carebears. For traderhunt i would recommand take a fleet with you with prefably of the same ships.

[Liq]

Are you playing on the PvE server? because if not, there are also player targets Much more fun to see them raging than capping ai traders.

[ZenTex]

My point is there should be an alternative to combat missions.

At the moment all there is is PvP (on the PvP servers) and missions. Usually, PvP costs money, and one needs a source of income to fund losses or to just get rich for whatever reason.

Sources of income would usually be missions or trading.Trading involves spending hours of real time travel and is boring as ****, missions also lost their charm after leveling up to rear admiral. One would expect there would be some fun and income to be had in OW, but NA fails big time in this regard.

 

As for fun, yes, PvP would be great, but due to the timezone I live in, this is mostly out of the question. in about 48 hours of searching for targets I have encountered one living being online, not my kind of fun.

Instead, it'd be nice if OW provided an opportunity to make money, help my nation and provided fun.

 

 

[Edward Canaday]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't have the same experience.  I don't do missions at all, I pretty much Only hunt OW.  Maybe I'm just not as impatient (no insult intended)?  It really is a matter of selecting good sea-lanes.  They do exist and particularly if you're hunting AI.  AI lanes differ dramatically from Player lanes, as well.  For my part I know which "paths" to take in order to increase my chances of action (AI or Player).  So I would recommend taking some time to learn the waters, as well as spreading out and getting a bit more active in the wider world.  

[Liq]

PvP doesn't cost that much money as you could simply go hunting in capped 1 dura ships or whatever. Don't necessarily need a fancy golden ship with all golden mods, it helps but it's NOT what leads you to victory, when it comes to player skills.
When I ranked up to the last rank, I didn't know what to do at first. Rageboarded some AI 1st rates for gold, but the game got boring doing only  that. Then I asked myself if I REALLY had to be in 1st rates all the time (as I just ranked up to Rear Admiral and could finally crew them), decided I could hop in smaller ships again for a change and found out that they were massively more fun (for me, that is). Now I pretty much spend all of my playtime in smaller ships / frigates looking for targets in the OW, have had much fun doing that  Can't remember the last time I was in a 1st rate. lol

[ZenTex]

5 minutes ago, Liquicity said:

PvP doesn't cost that much money as you could simply go hunting in capped 1 dura ships or whatever.

Yeah, I get that, but did you read the part where i said that few people are online when I'm online due to my timezone?

 

My choices are trading or doing missions. I was at least hoping for something to do in OW for some fun. The game needs a bit of diversity. At least in OW in enemy territory i'd have an inkling of hope to find other players.

[Cmdr RideZ]

I suppose the only thing to say is "Early Access".  I really do hope some radical changes, and it can be that I am not the only one.  Lets hope the next patch will fix some of the issues.

...

I suppose I could add, that currently the economy is wrecked.  So...  Waiting the next patch.

Edited November 22, 2016 by Cmdr RideZ

[Ted Nougat]

On 11/22/2016 at 3:09 AM, The Spud said:

We can only hope for an influx of returning/new players to make more epic battles and less boring sailing.

Very doubtful unless they create something for the casual player to do. Forcing pvp and forcing hours and hours of OW sailing aren't something most people will want to do, and so there's nobody for the pvp'ers to shoot at.

[Slamz]

Seeing a lot of moaning but no suggestions.

Personally, I hate all PvE. Fighting computers is just never exciting so I find the current open world and mission content to be "fine" in the sense that it is acceptably boring gives me the money I need.

The devs COULD spend time making a lot of custom mission content but I believe it would take them 3 months to make good PvE content that everyone would declare is boring after 1 month. This is certainly the case with MMORPGs, where even games with huge numbers of developers can't seem to bring PvE content out fast enough to keep the masses entertained. They blow through it too fast and then it's "boring".

We do need more PvP but I think until the game settles and The Big Reset happens, most people are staying away.

[Winters]

What the game needs is random events and encounters.

[Slamz]

16 hours ago, Winters said:

What the game needs is random events and encounters.

That's basically what the open world is.

The one suggestion I might make in terms of open world content is maybe it could be more dynamic. Like maybe the game can understand the size of player fleets out there and start spawning appropriate enemies to pass by. If the players are sitting out there in 4 Frigates, then spawning endless numbers of 12x 1st rates isn't doing anyone any good. Spawn fleets of 4-8 5th rates and send those through the area instead.

There's definitely room for improvement.

I feel like these canned missions are taking focus away from where it should be, which is improving the sandbox/open world.

[Anne Wildcat]

9 minutes ago, Slamz said:

That's basically what the open world is.

The one suggestion I might make in terms of open world content is maybe it could be more dynamic. Like maybe the game can understand the size of player fleets out there and start spawning appropriate enemies to pass by. If the players are sitting out there in 4 Frigates, then spawning endless numbers of 12x 1st rates isn't doing anyone any good. Spawn fleets of 4-8 5th rates and send those through the area instead.

There's definitely room for improvement.

I feel like these canned missions are taking focus away from where it should be, which is improving the sandbox/open world.

That's a good idea for those that like fighting AI, make the AI fleets that spawn be between .5x and 2x your group BR. 

Or maybe .5x to 2x the total player BR in the area

Edited November 27, 2016 by Anne Wildcat