Recommendations for saving a sinking ship

[Lord_Sluggo]

I've been playing Naval Action on and off since March last year. I've always had my doubts, and have voiced these doubts, but finally, I feel it is time to give up completely. In the spirit of 'testing', however, I'd like to make the following recommendations to the developers

Your map is too big

Based on the amount of players, the time it takes to sail anywhere, and the time regular people have to play the game, your map is just too damn large. Focus on a smaller section of the Caribbean. People who are claiming they want Brazil and the Portuguese Empire added to the game are deluding themselves. There isn't the playerbase to support what we have now

You have too many factions

I get it, you Nordics just looooove having Denmark-Norway and Sweden and probably another one I've forgotten. You just looooove how diverse and historically accurate it is. The fact of the matter is that there isn't the player base to support the number of factions we currently have. Cut it down to the main four: US, UK, France, and Spain. Cut down the map to include territory owned by those four and only those four. This ties back in to "Your map is too  big"

Your game is too grindy

I came to this game with friends from Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars. They all quit because they found NA to be lacking in content. Let that sink in: People who play a game where you stand in line to shoot muskets thought Naval Action was too boring. It takes too long to do anything. Face it: all you pay attention to are a couple hundred 70 year old retirees who have 20 hours a day to sail and grind and grind and sail and have 20 billion dollars worth of gold. You're ignoring the tens of thousands of players who can't spend 5 hours sailing to look for a fight, who can't afford to buy a new ship with upgrades and, now, even cannons, and who are intimidated by the fact that you have the world's most user-unfriendly UI. You've made a player-driven economy that requires tens of thousands of active players to run smoothly, yet you're not going to crack two thousand.

Naval Action is a niche game because you've made it into a niche game

Historical fiction in popular media has exploded in the past 20 years. We live in a world where a show like Black Sails is popular. We live in a world where 19 year old kids swoon over Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. We live in a world where Johnny Depp went from a drug-addicted washed-up has-been into a multi-gajillionaire A-lister because he plays a drunk pirate in a movie franchise set in the Age of Sail. The 'niche' aspect of Naval Action isn't the setting, it's the development decisions you have made.

Did I mention you're paying attention to the wrong segment of the population?

The numbers don't lie. Out of the over 100,000 people who bought NA, fewer than 1000 even play it, and fewer still participate on here and in the Steam forums. Around 50 super-hardcore players have dictated what kind of game you're making, to the detriment of the 99,950 who obviously  left for a reason. They don't care about alliances. They don't care about clans. They don't care about politics. They want to sail wooden ships crewed by iron men and blow up other wooden ships crewed by iron men.

You need to license the development of Naval Action to a studio who knows what they're doing

All the combat gameplay, ship stats, and mechanics were supposed to have been settled during Sea Trials. That was the whole point of you having Sea Trials. You have spent the past year not developing more gameplay mechanics, but rather further tweaking and altering the combat gameplay. If your game wasn't ready to be put on Steam you shouldn't have put it on Steam. It's obvious you have no idea what you want this game to end up looking like. If I'm wrong, and you do, then it's obvious you have no idea how to get there. It's obvious you have horrible customer relations, to anyone who's paid the least bit of attention to here and the Steam forums. It's obvious you lack the creativity and drive needed to develop a successful game of this scale. You need to let someone else take over who has more talent, more skill, more drive, and access to better and more resources than you currently have.

Fair Winds, I've uninstalled your game for good.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Lord_Sluggo