What is: Naval Action? - A video guide.

[Edward Vernon]

You may be playing devils advocate, or you may not, I don't know but you argue pretty strongly and passionately for a devils advocate. Frankly you are entitled to your opinion and as I said before you are well out of line with the majority of people here and are making assumptions about the open world sandbox that we haven't seen yet. However the game and players you describe are not what I hope or want here..... I am just gonig to ignore you now because you are starting to bore me and arguing back is tedious when you just keep repeating yourself...... enjoy whatever NA turns out to be.. and once again I say, look forward to meeting on the high Seas, please ensure you bring a lifejacket...

Crap.. responded to the wrong post...sorry RAM I AM on YOUR side....

[Flip]

You may be playing devils advocate, or you may not, I don't know but you argue pretty strongly and passionately for a devils advocate. Frankly you are entitled to your opinion and as I said before you are well out of line with the majority of people here and are making assumptions about the open world sandbox that we haven't seen yet. However the game and players you describe are not what I hope or want here..... I am just gonig to ignore you now because you are starting to bore me and arguing back is tedious when you just keep repeating yourself...... enjoy whatever NA turns out to be.. and once again I say, look forward to meeting on the high Seas, please ensure you bring a lifejacket...

 

 

Again, you make being out of line with the majority of people sound like a bad thing. This isn't your forum on RP, this is the games public forum.

 

And please, I love free marks, you and the rest of the RP community can give them to me just like in some other game that is a naughty word on your forums .

[RAMJB]

Crap.. responded to the wrong post...sorry RAM I AM on YOUR side....

 

 

lol, I was scratching my head wondering what was that

[Saintduiex]

Again, you make being out of line with the majority of people sound like a bad thing. This isn't your forum on RP, this is the games public forum.

 

And please, I love free marks, you and the rest of the RP community can give them to me just like in some other game that is a naughty word on your forums .

Not sure what you are saying here other than it is not his fourm. Until the next line when you say it is his forum

All kidding aside, it s my observation that well thought out dissenting and contrary opinions will often result in improved aspects in a game. But to do so I don't think you need to position yourself as a "me against the against the majority" forum poster.

Ultimately Game Labs will do what best fits their business model. And right now, it does not appear to be headed to dumbing the game down in an effort to reach a larger, yet much more fickle user base. We can read the game developers comments and statements as well as look at UGG "next door" to get a pretty good sense of the type of audience that they may be targeting. And it does not appear to me to be headed towards focusing on being just another "me too" game but to one completely different than what has come out on the market to date for this niche.

And as long as the niche is big enough to hold them over, I see this game picking up the larger group of users. Not by dumbing down to the lowest common denominator but by retaining high standards of realism and authenticity in an industry sorely lacking in that. That is what will increase the base, drawing new users who will "up their game" to play Naval Action.

Or I'm full of crap and talking out of my hat.

[Flip]

Not sure what you are saying here other than it is not his fourm. Until the next line when you say it is his forum

All kidding aside, it s my observation that well thought out dissenting and contrary opinions will often result in improved aspects in a game. But to do so I don't think you need to position yourself as a "me against the against the majority" forum poster.

Ultimately Game Labs will do what best fits their business model. And right now, it does not appear to be headed to dumbing the game down in an effort to reach a larger, yet much more fickle user base. We can read the game developers comments and statements as well as look at UGG "next door" to get a pretty good sense of the type of audience that they may be targeting. And it does not appear to me to be headed towards focusing on being just another "me too" game but to one completely different than what has come out on the market to date for this niche.

And as long as the niche is big enough to hold them over, I see this game picking up the larger group of users. Not by dumbing down to the lowest common denominator but by retaining high standards of realism and authenticity in an industry sorely lacking in that. That is what will increase the base, drawing new users who will "up their game" to play Naval Action.

Or I'm full of crap and talking out of my hat.

 

You miss the context, I speak of their Guild forum.

 

 

I don't argue against the majority for the soul reason of arguing against the majority, he simply said that I was posting contrasting views compared to the views of the majority and made it sound like a bad thing. He is just trying to protect his vision of the game, I don't blame him, but the way he goes about it is laughable.

[Edward Vernon]

You miss the context, I speak of their Guild forum.

 

 

I don't argue against the majority for the soul reason of arguing against the majority, he simply said that I was posting contrasting views compared to the views of the majority and made it sound like a bad thing. He is just trying to protect his vision of the game, I don't blame him, but the way he goes about it is laughable.

You do a very good job of making your arguing against the majority sound like you ARE doing it for just that reason. Why do you feel the need to play devils advocate. If you agree with the vision I and several other posters have argued here, why continue to argue against ? You jus make no sense at all to me and THAT my friend is what is laughable. Deriding other views as laughable is the last resort of someone losing a discussion on points if not a knockout. 

 

Damn...I said I wasn't going to reply to you again in this thread...see what you made me do.....?

[Flip]

You do a very good job of making your arguing against the majority sound like you ARE doing it for just that reason. Why do you feel the need to play devils advocate. If you agree with the vision I and several other posters have argued here, why continue to argue against ? You jus make no sense at all to me and THAT my friend is what is laughable. Deriding other views as laughable is the last resort of someone losing a discussion on points if not a knockout. 

 

Damn...I said I wasn't going to reply to you again in this thread...see what you made me do.....?

 

Your funny though.. I'd say this is worse "What a load of utter tosh....." Again you don't actually read or understand my posts, I said the way you do it is laughable, not the view itself, please read it again.

 

Losing a discussion? Is this the playground? Didn't know we were keeping score. How old are you, oh wait I know.

[Zarks]

DCS World : http://steamcharts.com/search?q=dcs+world - 140 people avg? Doing good?

 

140 people playing DCS World on Steam really says nothing of the size of the DCS community. DCS World was only recently introduced to Steam, there is a free standing version that most people are still using. I'm sure that most, maybe even all, of the Steam users are new people that discovered the sim through Steam, and that didn't play the free standing version before.

[Edward Vernon]

 How old are you, oh wait I know.

Almost certainly old enough to be your father.....unless you are over 40. Work it out and stop getting personal. These forums are generally totally devoid of personal comment. And I see you are now using a defaced version of my Avatar to further insult me. Looking at the available evidence there is only one conclusion to draw here.....So now I am thinking you are actually a Troll, I have fallen for it yes, but thought at least initially you were up for a reasonable debate, now proven to be a mistaken impression. 

[Flip]

Almost certainly old enough to be your father.....unless you are over 40. Work it out and stop getting personal. These forums are generally totally devoid of personal comment. And I see you are now using a defaced version of my Avatar to further insult me. Looking at the available evidence there is only one conclusion to draw here.....So now I am thinking you are actually a Troll, I have fallen for it yes, but thought at least initially you were up for a reasonable debate, now proven to be a mistaken impression. 

 

The how old are you is directed at your 'scoring' system of points in a discussion. When two viewpoints are being discussed no one can win on pts. The avatar is there due to you replying 'What a load of utter tosh' instead of making a valid counterpoint.

 

It all seems a bit.. hypocritical... when you do stuff and then say its bad after already having done it... yes?

[HarryButpain]

nice video, worst thing that could happen at the current state of the game is that 14 year olds start trolling forums about game lacking action while crying over lack of anime portraits...

And all you people who went to an actual naval academy, you've to simply deal with the fact that the more hardcore sim the game becomes the more niche it will be, which would therefore be pretty bad considering that NA isn't meant to be a single player experience like grey wolves mod... Keeping it authentic is great but cracking jokes via flags and code book in-game goes a bit too far, wouldn't you say?

 

Godspeed to all of you testers and devs, I'll catch you later in a few months 

[Edward Vernon]

The how old are you is directed at your 'scoring' system of points in a discussion. When two viewpoints are being discussed no one can win on pts. The avatar is there due to you replying 'What a load of utter tosh' instead of making a valid counterpoint.

 

It all seems a bit.. hypocritical... when you do stuff and then say its bad after already having done it... yes?

NO.....

[Flip]

NO.....

 

Sigh

[Johny Reb]

I'm late to this discussion but I just wanted to state my position. Everyone needs to understand the idea of balance. If you think this game will survive (and I'm sure NA owners don't want it to survive but to thrive) it will require the casual players time, exponentially to the hardcore players. You always have more casual players than you do hardcore players. Don't be disrespectful towards players of different style. They are needed as are you. Thats not to say I want to see the game dumbed down but I think flip's ultimate concern is a sim type game that will have poor gameplay and therefore low player base. Flip likes fights(I know him personally) and if you make it so sim like, so hardcore, then you will reduce interested players and therefore have no people to fight and it will die like Potbs after a few years or until the devs dumb it down to attract more population.

 

Now I do think Flip needs to be a little more open minded about mechanics of the game that he isnt used to. Many testers right now after a little practice it isn't impossible to hit those little ships and with time they will work with the burden of a storm as well. My guess is storms will be rarer things or at least they should be. I think most will find those storms exciting as long as they don't have to battle them every 10 minutes or every other fight.

[Pixel]

I definitely think achieving a balance where things are easy to learn but hard to master for most folks is key here. Especially if the core of the Naval Action experience is going to be the planned open world. Most hardcore simulators have lots of customizable difficulty settings (e.g. Managing engine mixture or manual startup sequences in some flight simulators). But if a game is built around open world multiplayer (PVE or PVP) you're going to have to have everyone playing with the same ruleset even if different areas within the world might be more or less challenging.

If we get the ability host scenario based practice/skirmish battles or our own open world mode servers then we might ultimately see some sort of simulator style settings with difficulty options that can be toggled on or off. But, currently this seems like more of a long term wishlist sort of thing.

Anyways, so far I really like what I've seen and played of the current Alpha.

[Charles Caldwell]

I really enjoyed your video Flip, the first half was insightful and informative.... great thank you!

 

Sadly your personal views on what it should be like in the latter half I disagreed with 100%. You clearly come with a huge PotBS biased that will, if implemented lead to the utter failure of this game as proved by the mediocre game that is currently PotBS. 

 

Like I say to all potbs fans, if you want what you've got already why come to NA to merely create another clone?

[Flip]

I really enjoyed your video Flip, the first half was insightful and informative.... great thank you!

 

Sadly your personal views on what it should be like in the latter half I disagreed with 100%. You clearly come with a huge PotBS biased that will, if implemented lead to the utter failure of this game as proved by the mediocre game that is currently PotBS. 

 

Like I say to all potbs fans, if you want what you've got already why come to NA to merely create another clone?

 

I come with a POTBS bias but from the time that POTBS was good, not the disaster it is now. I like the move away from skills and all that but we will see when this game is complete how it turns out.

[Charles Caldwell]

I come with a POTBS bias but from the time that POTBS was good, 

 

PotBS has always failed to live up to the hype, its combat is arcade, its format is WOW and its majority fanbase reflects that. I think most of the followers here, whether old disillusioned PotBS fans or pure NA fans want to break the mould with this game, not repeat the mistakes that Flying Labs made.

 

Your comments about needing more skill sets, and for faster combat reflects that arcade bias... and I also take offence that you categorise us NA fans as hardcore realism fans, and your group as 'Nice' casual players. There isnt two camps, there are many views. Thankfully the arcade crowd are few and far between. I hope it stays that way!

[RAMJB]

I come with a POTBS bias but from the time that POTBS was good

 

POTBS was good at one moment only because of the players trying to make it good. But eventually every single one of them got tired of the restricted "no agression zone" Open Sea, the tiny PVP areas that focused all combat in 1/20th of the map area promoting ganking and making anything other than 6-strong-group PVP inviable, failboating, horrid avcom, the demand to grind boring and repetitive as heck daily missions to get the best gear for PVP (thus forcing PVPers to do boring and repetitive PVE dailies, or to fight at a disadvantage), the mass-presence of carebears who only wanted to do econ and dailies and would cringe at the mere idea of them being attacked by other player (Thus neglecting the whole idea behind a game with "Pirates" in it's name, ultraeasy economic model that made level 50 boats a joke to build so they could be everywhere for dirt cheap, thus making almost all of the level 1-49 ships totally worthless, and such a long etcetera that I could go for a good half an hour of listing things.

 

When that people left the game after realizing that playing World of Warcraft with 3d models of ships with totally unrealistic mechanics had nothing to do with the real life "feeling", and after realizing that playing in a scenario where you couldn't attack anything out of the made-up-artificial-small-as-heck red zones that made the game artificial and immersion inexistant, the game simply failed.

 

And you want to replicate that here. Orleans dailies. Unrealistic behavior ships. Dumbed down mechanics because if things require skill and actual effort to learn then the "casuals" might find it "too hard" (so what if they do). I'm sure you'll be the first one in the line of those who will frontally oppose unrestricted PVP in the open world sandbox, just in case them poor carebears might be too scared to join the game (so what if they do), and will try to enforce some totally laughable artificial mechanic that "ensure" that anyone who doesn't want to face being attacked by a player doesn't do so. Heck of a lot of immersion there. I'm sure real life captains would go around complaining about being attacked in the high seas by enemy ships and then some overpowering power would come down and tell them "don't worry, we'll implement this mechanic that will prevent anyone from attacking you if you don't wish it to happen, so you can get rich by default and at no risk, nor cost, nor effort whatsoever".

 

Makes looooooooots of sense. Well, then again, not.

 

You want POTBS2. WoW with Age of Sail ships instead of Gnomes, Paladins or Mages. POTBS worked for a while because a good chunk of the players making it work were the players that actually tried to learn the game and challenge themselves, and not do dumb orleans dailies or unchallenged econ where your large up-to-the-tops loaded hauler could sail freely without any escort as long as he was out of the red areas risking nothing in the process. Once those were gone, what was left?. A dead game that went zombie and where only a ever-deminishing handful of people still played mostly by inertia.

 

I want the guys who want to learn the game and challenge themselves. Those who want to carebear, get rich by doing nothing else that putting time on the game without risking themselves even once, do dailies, and are going to whine like dying pigs each time their unescorted cargo ship gets attacked in the open seas, can stay in what's left of POTBS, or go play whatever MMO of their choice. But what's me at least I don't want them here, unless they understand that POTBS failed for a certain set of reasons and that replicating them here will only turn this into POTBS2, with the same defects, failures and drawbacks, and the same, unavoidable, end.

 

Maybe you want that to happen. I don't.

[KillBox]

Not one to carry the argument (as it's getting nasty), I'll simply state my experiences so far with different economic models in games, as well as the game's mechanics.

 

Naval Action, at it's heart, started as a Sailing Soft Sim.  Now, by Soft Sim, understand that it's meaning is closer to War Thunder's "Simulator Battles" than "Realistic Battles".  If this game were a Hard Sim, the game would not function at all as you'd need 20+ players working together on one Sloop to get it moving.

 

Now that's we've defined what I mean with "Soft Sim", lets move on.  First - the idea that you need a concurrent player-base of over 10000 players online at any given time is actually patently false.  The Flight Sim community is pretty much living evidence of this - increased buy-in and running cost distributed over a much smaller player base still results in a net-profit for content creators.  100 players willing to pay $30 for a beautifully made yacht is the same as 1000 players buying $3-worth of bric-a-brac in a cash shop - the economic scale is slanted towards a higher quality of life product and player "retention" as opposed to faster player "turnover". 

 

I play Rise of Flight and DCS as well, both games have seen over $120 of my money a piece - that's equivalent to four "New Release" titles that don't have the quality of life to entertain me nearly as long as my benzine-spitting Bristol Falcon II has (have logged over 200 hours in it).  Because it entertains me, because I'm 31 with a stable job and some disposable income, I will spend the amount again on a product worth my time.  The community is awesome, adult and friendly, and we don't have to deal with forum histrionics and [CONCERN] threads by pre-teens summing up to "But it's too HARD!"

 

Naval Action's developers, a very small crew openly taking suggestions and feedback to make the experience more rewarding and powerful, to make combat every bit as deep and as interesting as being engaged at the console of an A-10C, have decided to go with being a niche game in a niche (and under-served) genre.  They want higher player retention, a higher quality of life product and a more complex experience.  Ultimately, this is by *design* - not an accident or some artificial barrier to keep the plebs out.  The game's sailing and damage model (both of which will become far more complex) is what it is by design.

 

Ultimately, most early adopters here agree that, of the things we must keep from PoTBS: User generated content/ships - this will take a lot of strain off the Dev Team and we can help ourselves to loads of ship types filling whatever perceived power gap we may discover.  The Nation-vs-Nation focus was also a nice implementation from PoTBS (though the fact that every battle was a Port Battle was a bit silly).  What we don't want are the boats magically sail up to 20 knots close-hauled... the fore-and-aft/lanteen-riggers that somehow are fitted with Studding Sails... the neon-green sails and the TRON paint-jobs...

 

And I think, most of all, what we never want to see of PoTBS is the Metagaming.  Players stopped caring what they sailed as long as it was Meta-compliant - didn't care how it looked or handled, only that it did what it was supposed to do when they activated their clicky macros... it stopped being about the Age of Sail and the battles fought and the importance of those battles to being reduced to some silly RvR Metagame that was no different than the RvR in Guild Wars, or STO, or whatever other MMO you care to mention.

 

It stopped being unique.  It stopped being a challenge.  It was just another cookie-cutter MMO pandering to the LCD, and frankly, PC Gamers are growing weary of that crap.

[Balck]

Mr. KillBox, my sentiments exactly.

 

[Flip]

POTBS was good at one moment only because of the players trying to make it good. But eventually every single one of them got tired of the restricted "no agression zone" Open Sea, the tiny PVP areas that focused all combat in 1/20th of the map area promoting ganking and making anything other than 6-strong-group PVP inviable, failboating, horrid avcom, the demand to grind boring and repetitive as heck daily missions to get the best gear for PVP (thus forcing PVPers to do boring and repetitive PVE dailies, or to fight at a disadvantage), the mass-presence of carebears who only wanted to do econ and dailies and would cringe at the mere idea of them being attacked by other player (Thus neglecting the whole idea behind a game with "Pirates" in it's name, ultraeasy economic model that made level 50 boats a joke to build so they could be everywhere for dirt cheap, thus making almost all of the level 1-49 ships totally worthless, and such a long etcetera that I could go for a good half an hour of listing things.

 

When that people left the game after realizing that playing World of Warcraft with 3d models of ships with totally unrealistic mechanics had nothing to do with the real life "feeling", and after realizing that playing in a scenario where you couldn't attack anything out of the made-up-artificial-small-as-heck red zones that made the game artificial and immersion inexistant, the game simply failed.

 

And you want to replicate that here. Orleans dailies. Unrealistic behavior ships. Dumbed down mechanics because if things require skill and actual effort to learn then the "casuals" might find it "too hard" (so what if they do). I'm sure you'll be the first one in the line of those who will frontally oppose unrestricted PVP in the open world sandbox, just in case them poor carebears might be too scared to join the game (so what if they do), and will try to enforce some totally laughable artificial mechanic that "ensure" that anyone who doesn't want to face being attacked by a player doesn't do so. Heck of a lot of immersion there. I'm sure real life captains would go around complaining about being attacked in the high seas by enemy ships and then some overpowering power would come down and tell them "don't worry, we'll implement this mechanic that will prevent anyone from attacking you if you don't wish it to happen, so you can get rich by default and at no risk, nor cost, nor effort whatsoever".

 

Makes looooooooots of sense. Well, then again, not.

 

You want POTBS2. WoW with Age of Sail ships instead of Gnomes, Paladins or Mages. POTBS worked for a while because a good chunk of the players making it work were the players that actually tried to learn the game and challenge themselves, and not do dumb orleans dailies or unchallenged econ where your large up-to-the-tops loaded hauler could sail freely without any escort as long as he was out of the red areas risking nothing in the process. Once those were gone, what was left?. A dead game that went zombie and where only a ever-deminishing handful of people still played mostly by inertia.

 

I want the guys who want to learn the game and challenge themselves. Those who want to carebear, get rich by doing nothing else that putting time on the game without risking themselves even once, do dailies, and are going to whine like dying pigs each time their unescorted cargo ship gets attacked in the open seas, can stay in what's left of POTBS, or go play whatever MMO of their choice. But what's me at least I don't want them here, unless they understand that POTBS failed for a certain set of reasons and that replicating them here will only turn this into POTBS2, with the same defects, failures and drawbacks, and the same, unavoidable, end.

 

Maybe you want that to happen. I don't.

 

No, please stop assuming what I want. I want the best parts of POTBS and the best parts of NA combined. I don't want dailies and grinding of BTORT over and over. I want the RvR system (or the best parts of it) for global conquest. I want the same rush of heavy 6v6's  or group vs group that most games can't recreate. I want the red zone feeling in POTBS extended over the entire map so the newbs can't hide. You don't know what I want but assume you do.

 

On a side note, there is no dumbing down in a game like POTBS, is the sailing arcadey? yes, but there are other layers not seen in Naval Action that made it as, if not more, complex. Most people couldn't even figure out POTBS to the full extent which meant going on the OS was easy, stomping people and topping leaderboards was easy and I'm guessing you never did it

[Flip]

 

 

 

Now that's we've defined what I mean with "Soft Sim", lets move on.  First - the idea that you need a concurrent player-base of over 10000 players online at any given time is actually patently false.  The Flight Sim community is pretty much living evidence of this - increased buy-in and running cost distributed over a much smaller player base still results in a net-profit for content creators.  100 players willing to pay $30 for a beautifully made yacht is the same as 1000 players buying $3-worth of bric-a-brac in a cash shop - the economic scale is slanted towards a higher quality of life product and player "retention" as opposed to faster player "turnover". 

 

 

 

 

 

The difference is the dev's have stated this will be a MMO, not a sim with instanced battles. The heart of the game will be PvP, lets face it AI are never fun to play against after a few battles. Not only that but 6 devs aren't going to be dreaming up the next gen of artificial intelligence. This means the game needs a larger concurrent player base to populate the ocean than any other "sim" game currently out there. IF the game was instanced battles only (like testing is right now) then a small playerbase of 1000 would be fine. Alas it is open world with possibly a world scale, that means you need a lot more players than 1000 to populate the world to the point where there are fights. Thus I disagree.

 

If this game sells its in game ships as you say, then that's blatant pay to win, something your aforementioned gamers are starting to avoid also.

[RAMJB]

No, please stop assuming what I want.

 

Then stop asking for things that will end up in making this game repeat the fundamental POTBS flaws.

 

 

On a side note, there is no dumbing down in a game like POTBS

 

 

Wait, what?. The ship model was unrealistic as heck, the damage model was laughable, the mechanics had nothing to do with the ones in real life. There was no complication in it, just selecting a "meta" skillset appropiate for the ship you were running and the way you wanted to fight, and a sequence in which those skills had to be applied for maximum effect. Sure, maybe a skill or two would be situational and you should apply it in the proper moment, but other than that, where's the "hard" part on that?. How's that not "dumbed down"?. That was a fighting system so complicated that I learned in one afternoon of training/teaching with Roberta Diaz in 1v1 skirmish mode, and so challenging that I got my 8 year old nephews playing effectively in no time (and no, I'm not making it up). That's how complicated it was.

 

And don't get me started about the avcom part. Or the rageboarding builds. Verry complicated to pull and win that way, comrade. Verry.

 

Seriously ,if for you POTBS fighting was not "dumbed down" I'd hate to think what it is.

 

 

most people couldn't even figure out POTBS to the full extent which meant going on the OS was easy, stomping people and topping leaderboards was easy and I'm guessing you never did it

 

 

 

I never care about scores, leaderboards, or showboat statistics. I don't even in flight sims, which are my forte - not gonna do in a game with ships. That for beginners.

 

I got the whole fighting system for 1v1s figured out as I said in just one afternoon. After that I was out in my small ship of choice with small OS visibility range, with privateer stealth skillsets, hunting alone in the red areas, lurking using my low visibility to stay safe from ganks and 6 groups. Lone prey was rare in the minuscle red zones (and the activity boring as hell, one of the reasons I lost interest in that game pretty quickly), but when lone prey was found, even with a strongly unoptimized skillset for fighting (stealth skills demanded very unoptimal builds for fighting), I won most of my engagements and was able to win vs much heavier and better ships for 1v1 than my own. From taking down capri MCs in a Cerberus, to forcing surrenders of Couronnes in a Discovery, to taking on a Wenden with a Raa and forcing him to pay me a fortune so I wouldn't sink his expensive 3rd rate. I would say that I didn't have a problem with that game's fighting system at all, leaderboards or not.

 

That most people didn't ever figured out POTBS fighting had more to do with most people's lack of interest in putting effort in learning anything that involved risking their pixel ships and as a result had no PVP experience beyond port battles. Not by the fact that the system was any complicated at all. Which it wasn't by any means. There was no tactical layer whatsoever there. Only timing your skills properly. if you call that "not dumbed down", I'll have to insist, I don't want to know what "dumbed down" means for you.

[KillBox]

The difference is the dev's have stated this will be a MMO, not a sim with instanced battles. The heart of the game will be PvP, lets face it AI are never fun to play against after a few battles. Not only that but 6 devs aren't going to be dreaming up the next gen of artificial intelligence. This means the game needs a larger concurrent player base to populate the ocean than any other "sim" game currently out there. IF the game was instanced battles only (like testing is right now) then a small playerbase of 1000 would be fine. Alas it is open world with possibly a world scale, that means you need a lot more players than 1000 to populate the world to the point where there are fights. Thus I disagree.

 

If this game sells its in game ships as you say, then that's blatant pay to win, something your aforementioned gamers are starting to avoid also.

 

Again, I say Soft Sim, you say "Sim".  These things are not the same.

 

The heart of the game (in actual fact, as per the devs) is RvR (Realm vs Realm) or Nation vs Nation as you please.  PvP is a purely a thing in that happens as a consequence of RvR, not the other way around.  No need to meander about on the Main looking for a fight from 10000 randoms - Navies used to look for each other and beat each other senseless. 

 

Have a browse at the Open World plans and you'll find that, even though this is a Soft Sim, if will draw in more players than we're expecting - thanks largely to plans for dedicated cartographers, explorers and merchants.  So I'm not too worried about the population, as I believe it will draw a good amount.  And again, no you don't need six-figures in player numbers, even with an open world: APB, STO, even PoTBS all have shamefully small communities compared to their heyday and their initial plans, all have open worlds, but they're still limping along - STO is still in active development.  SW:TOR is another offender after pissing away half a billion USD, and if it keeps on life-support, it may break even over time.

 

The term "MMO" is completely nebulous at this point - the only games to retain "Massive" amounts of players are WoW, WoT, LoL and DoTA.

 

So in short, I'm taking the middle ground here.  I'm predicting far more than a couple hundred online concurrent, but not nearly close to any big-time MMO.  And that's okay.  A six-man team doesn't need a million a month budget to keep oil in the lamps, and with the community generating a good chunk of the important content (ships and assets) what you have here is a cut-and-shut hotrod built on a budget but still loads of fun.  It's this whole new "Crowd as part of the Development" thing - crazy but it works so far.

 

We can debate population sizes, retention and turnover rates - I'm more than happy to do so.  I actually found your video rather well put together - and yes, I understand what an Opinion Piece is and of course, you are entitled to it.

 

The bottom line is, what you're suggesting is that the game should be more accessible to a wider audience, and so reach the monetary success you believe it deserves.  While commendable, it compromises the core vision of the game.  At this game's core is the idea of an Age of Sail "Soft Sim" - realistic enough to appease most real sailors and us desk-sailors, while things happen quickly and easily enough so it doesn't become tedious and boring.  Most here believe this core vision should not be compromised, myself included.  All other arguments stand at the edge of this core discussion.

 

This core discussion is why Star Citizen exists - it's why Elite: Dangerous exists.  It's why Indies are finally standing up and getting noticed.  Because developers are sick and tired of compromising their vision in the interest of pandering to the masses, to get to release dates faster and in time for seasonal sales.  Developers are creative people - let them create what they want to create.  They want to create a Soft Sim with loads of real-world sailing qualities - that's why we came.  They want the advice of serving seamen, tall-ship sailors and hobby historians - that's why we post here.

 

Also, to address your very... creative interpretation of the Pay-to-Win phenomenon: If, in your mind, a 12-gun Dutch Yacht with a Da Vinci Fresco on her stern-quarters amounts to "Pay-to-Win" in a game where a 36-gun Frigate with over six times the gun poundage is set to be the average - I will heartily suggest you go look up Pay-to-Win and ponder it's meaning in real depth.