Server Merge Proposal

[Iroquois Confederacy]

2 minutes ago, rediii said:

We dont need to get everyone on one server. I dont see any reason for this.

What we need is good gamemechanics, UI etc. so the global server can grow again. I dont feel the special need to play NA with players that currently play on global server

I do not foresee the Global server growing "again."  It has continued to bleed players at a steady rate, as does the EU server.  Any boost from UI, Localization, and the like will be, likely, temporary, especially if we have two uneven servers.  People will simply not stick around.  We need a critical mass to maintain player base as long as possible.

No matter what happens, the servers will have to merge.  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but they will have to merge, as MMOs always lose players over time.  We have one real opportunity to do it, and that's before final release.  We need to solve these issues now, so that we can maintain a higher server population as long as possible.  Anything else is shortsighted.

[Grundgemunkey]

15 hours ago, Intrepido said:

If GB, US or Pirates gets the numbers of both servers combined, no nation will be able to counter that.

so your resistance isnt based on whats good for the game .... according to redii no one can counter the swedes on eu .... whats the difference ..

[Archaos]

6 hours ago, rediii said:

Qlso I dont say you should go away. You can play on global server like now or like I think NA works best on a American server with a adjusted conquest window and adjusted maintenance time.

So what about the people who dont like night/work flips but do play during EU primetime? where are they supposed to play?

Would you still have the same opinion if the Devs had set it so that the limited PB time server was set to the US primetime and the other server was left with port battles at anytime. Which server would you choose to play on then?

[Archaos]

6 hours ago, rediii said:

Also I proposed regional servers, You didnt get that. In my oppinion the global concept doesnt work. Instead servers have to have a window like on EU server covering a few hours in the US and AS timezones

Regional servers with limited PB times can also cause issues because not everyone in a region has the same work/life schedule. I live in UK but my play time is more suited to early afternoon or very late at night, prime time of 6pm to 11pm does not suit me as I have other commitments. 

A single server could work if people would just be a bit more flexible and not expect everything to be available to them always in their own primetime. As long as you are able to set the time you can defend your ports there should not be much of an issue.

They could even look at bringing in a system where clans could set their own fixed prime time defense, for example clan A when formed would have to nominate a port defense window and that is the window all their ports can be attacked in. Make it so this time could not be changed at short notice and limit who can partake in the attack or defense of a port. The game should move more towards clan based warfare rather than nations, I never understood why they watered down some of the original clan based warfare ideas.

[Hodo]

This is the ONLY MMO RVR/PVP game I have ever played that has restrictions because one part of the world cant figure out that it is a MASSIVELY MULTI-PLAYER ONLINE GAME! 

I have played, Eve, WWII Online, Aces High, Warbirds, Anarchy Online, Mortal Online, Wurm Online, Ultima Online... and NONE of those had restrictions based on your timezone.  

 

[CoyoteJohn]

Why can't we simply do away with port battles and move to a more gradual conquest scheme? Something that takes place over a full 24 hours or even multiple days? Would that not be inclusive for all players in all timezones? You might say that this would eliminate the "big battle" mechanic. Well, considering some of the recent pot battle results I've seen, they're getting smaller and smaller with the new BR system. If you want a big fight, organize and bring a big fleet, with the understanding that the one big battle doesn't completely decide the fate of a single port.

Not only would this fix the flip issue, it would lengthen conquest as to be more of a long-term game mechanic...something you need in an MMO. 

[Doug Maoz]

On 11/16/2017 at 2:44 AM, Iroquois Confederacy said:

3. Merge the players over, and just say, “I am sorry, but, you're going to lose your ship XP and your skill books and your ships.”

Its pretty hello kittyed that this is your best option. Players on both servers have worked for what they have in-game, and if your preferred solution to increase the playerbase involves taking all their stuff away, I don't see you working towards your stated goal...At the very least ship knowledge (books & slots opened) must be maintained. Ships and materials can be replaced.

At this point I don't have a strong preference for merging the servers or not, as long as people still have a working game. However I have seen NO discussion about the latency problems this will introduce; someone will invariably lose out with a one server solution.

As a west coast US player the ping is already bad enough to the Global server; when I look at the server list the EU one is typically 500ms+, with spikes up to 3000ms(?!?). I don't think players would enjoy the game as much with a 1 second delay (500 there, 500 back). I know I wouldn't, using the menus and crafting is already slippery enough, to say nothing of combat.

Everyone wants to see this game grow, including myself. I'm happy with any compromise, as long as the game keeps players at the end of it.

[CoyoteJohn]

8 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

Your proposal have a big problem: The nation with 24/7 playerbase will win. 

A nation like France with a playerbase that only play 4-5 hours at a specific time cant compete with a nation like GB, with players from Australia, Europe and America.

Recruit people outside your timezone. Push for a privateer system where pirates can take a contract to fly under a national flag for a week or two.

There are solutions that will work. Shooting down every idea offered because you only choose to see the drawbacks isn't getting us anywhere. A merge will come, either due to popular support or because the game is dying and can no longer support multiple servers. Might as well be open-minded and offer solutions instead of just naysaying everything.

[King of Crowns]

15 hours ago, Intrepido said:

People can change nations in one click.

WO wont last one week in the french nation of EU server (imagine why).

Aus players will go to GB, as it always happened.

Look at Global, only 3 big nations. 2 of them most of the time allied. No balance.

Do not speak of balance when global, your server, is the best proof of everything that can go wrong.

 

you presume to know a lot about how people will respond. I don't think you have a clue what people are going to do  how could you? the old world is not the new world my friend. stop living in the past. its been over a year now.

 

[King of Crowns]

2 hours ago, Intrepido said:

Hahahaha the same as always: recruit people from other timezones.

I dont know if you are new to the game but things do not work that way. People chose between historical nations and some of them are more popular than others.

What we need is working mechanics for all situations, not proposals based on something as unstable/unpredictable as the will of players.

Im going to shout away any idea that dont solve anything and make the game worse. So keep thinking and maybe you will have a good idea.

the dreaded time zone flipping and night flipping is an issue of player population. and its just that simple. population was to low at certain times of the day for nations to have enough for fleets. those mechanics have changed. its time to move on. get all people together so we can all be happy and play the game for the better. everyone wins. 

[Atreides]

Circular argument take 639:    sic..."Having RVR outside of my primetime is bad for the game"

Or another way of phrasing the argument is a small vocal group of players are a bit precious and self entitled.

I really hope the devs find a way to rework RVR that maybe produces the least amount of whinging, or do that last total wipe of everything  (clans and all) and roll out global correctly with a description about RVR nerf limits on the EU server.

[Grundgemunkey]

1 hour ago, Intrepido said:

History repeats itself. Same actions, same consequences. You can predict a lot by looking at the past.

Most EU nations will have always the same bunch of guys defending it at day and at night. 

You need less people than before but not less than a certain amount.

The BR system do not solve nightflips. Nightflips/workflips must simply do not happen at all.

shown you a way to avoid night flips ... workflips ..... but you dont want that either .... history repeats its self when people are inwilling to embrace change

[Custard]

33 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

History repeats itself when people make the same mistakes.

There is no way to solve that one guy wants to play with another who is sleeping or working. 

One of the two have to sacrifice his real life to please the other desires.

When you play a PB at your favorite time suitable just for you that is a nightflip to half the world it is the nature of an MMO, you need to man up and grasp this by wanting just to play in your zone only you will kill the games potential.

It is not the job of the game developers to make the RvR work in an MMO that is our job and we (that is all the testers/players) are failing it must be made to work for everyone not just you.

[Sella]

Actually there is. Try as a community to get more people into the game. Youtube being one of the strongest tools. RP is also one good tool and combined with some video editing skills it can attract new players.

[Archaos]

9 hours ago, Intrepido said:

Almost same solution as lord protector system. 

A system quite hated when you see that the port you lost the day before can only be attacked when you are working/sleeping.

The lord protector system was hated when there was the flag system for attacking ports, you only had short notice to organize and defend your port. With the current system you have 22 hours notice of the attack and if you have set the port battle to your own clans prime time you should be able to defend. I agree to take it back you may have to attack it outside your prime time but as you can decide when you want to attack you can ensure you have enough people available to attack at that time. People can be more flexible in their play times at weekends or during holidays.

You have to remember as well that for the other clan to take your port and put it on that bad PB time for you they most probably had to attack outside their prime time too. I know people will say that this then gives an advantage to clans and nations that have a greater timezone coverage of players, but I think if they brought in limitations of who can attack or defend a port and not allow quick change of clans, then this could be mitigated a bit. If one clan of 50 players with players spread over many timezones wants to attack another clan with 50 players in a single timezone, I think the clan with people all in the same timezone have more chance of ensuring that they get the full numbers to defend while the other way round the clan spread over many timezones may struggle to get sufficient defenders no matter what time it is set for.

You also conveniently forget about players whose playtime is not in EU prime time, with the current system they are forced to miss out on a large portion of the game if they play on EU server or they have to put up with night/work flips on the Global server. How is this fair to them? As I asked in another reply which no one has answered, how would you feel if the Devs had set one server with port battles only in US prime time and left the other server with global time port battles, which server would you play on then? and would you be asking for some solution to be found to the problem? Try putting yourself in another persons shoes and realizing what the issues are and why people are asking for changes, rather than going along with the attitude of "I'm all right, so who cares about them".

[Archaos]

16 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

EU community asked the devs for a small server but with healthy gameplay and compatible with real life of most europeans. We are talking here about many players from all europe, from spain to russia.

US players did a bet on no timers for pb. They could do a different bet, they could ask for another set up. Why would I blame them?

 

I live in EU and am part of the EU community and I did not ask for this, so please when you talk of the EU community do not make out that it is more than a few people with the loudest voices that pressured the Devs into making this change. The game does not have the population to have multiple servers all with their own limited PB timers. If the US asked for their own timers then what about the Australians? When the server changes happened the US and Australians and other people like myself did not request multiple PB time limited servers because it was unreasonable and it was felt that things could be made to work on a server that catered for all, but the way the server changes were handled meant that the Global server never really got going as has been explained in other threads on the issue.

There are already people complaining about the EU PB times starting too early for players in the UK since the clocks went back, so if the Devs listen to them and they push the times forward an hour you will get people in the Eastern side of Europe complaining that it ends too late.

The Devs have indicated that they are looking at a single server solution and I hope they come up with it soon.

[Archaos]

23 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

I dont know if you played the game when it was first launched in EA.

GB had a fleet of guys from Australia and maybe 2 full fleets at EU primetime. 

I have a very good memory, I dont forget anything.

I played the game from shortly after EA started, but I was never much involved in RvR at the time.

But things have moved on since then and with more clan based port battles you are unlikely to get the same sort of thing. This is why I say they should limit who can assist in attacking or defending a port and not allow quick switching of clans, that way you are not having to attack or defend against a whole nation but rather a clan which is more likely to have a more localized timezone membership.

[IndianaGeoff]

2 hours ago, Intrepido said:

EU community asked the devs for a small server but with healthy gameplay and compatible with real life of most europeans. We are talking here about many players from all europe, from spain to russia.

US players did a bet on no timers for pb. They could do a different bet, they could ask for another set up. Why would I blame them?

 

The US players accepted an unliked mechanic to support Oceania.  Nobody want's night flips.  Some players want Ausnz players more.  There has not been a huge problem with nighflips on Global.  For the most part people are playing nice.  But that is not certain going forward.

This game is too small to risk losing any major population in the world.  It is also not large enough to solve the problem in big ways.

[Grundgemunkey]

On 18/11/2017 at 10:30 AM, Intrepido said:

History repeats itself when people make the same mistakes.

There is no way to solve that one guy wants to play with another who is sleeping or working. 

One of the two have to sacrifice his real life to please the other desires.

split the map imto  2 or three timezones when pb can happen and the day/night flip will not happen .....i dont see what the problem is ... you can sail around the map as at present with no limitation ... only thing affected is rvr

your posts seem to indicate that all is well in NA and this doesnt need changing ,,,, the numbers of players in the game suggests otherwise

[Tenet]

People who don't RvR and don't understand how it works should not be posting in this thread unless OW hunting is referenced.

Some of the ideas on the first page were great. World of Tanks Clan Wars had a functional system of gradual time-zone changes - the USA map during 2014 was divided between all the North American time zones, from PST in the West to EST in the East.

This allowed clans to have fights against others in their time zones primarily, but also have an option to once in awhile raid an inconvenient time zone just to prove a point. It worked. 

EU vs NA is a bigger time zone gap but the RvR map is huge and can be easily split up for RvR. It could be done gradually where some places would be very friendly to EU clans, some places very friendly to NA clan time zones, and some places will be in-between and could be set to a wider range between EU and NA depending on who controls the port. 

This will also end up benefitting OW hunters because with merged servers they will have the maximum number of targets, and traders will not have easy solutions like "I'll just login during off hours when it's safe" because it will always be "prime-time" for someone. 

It's time to accept consensus and discuss details.

----

RvR is indeed not the reason why numbers are low - they are low because Player Interaction is not sufficiently supported. Admin does not recognize Player Interaction as sufficient motivation for people to stay playing, so he doesn't promote it as much as other features.

Examples: 

1. Why is there no system to detect Hostility Missions in-progress? These were supposed to be contested but they are not announced on the map so it's very difficult to respond. Easy fix to have a Nation-wide announcement when a port gets attacked for hostility. 

2. Why is there no system to bribe for Intel and get heat-maps of player activity, or player based "rumors"? Remove time waste associated with finding where other players are on a huge map and you will see more people stick around. 

Combat News is great but there should be reports of all battles, including where no one sank. It should be an option on the map to track activity to promote people to sail out and explore such reports. 

3. Safe Zones and National Spawns should be moved away from the center of the map. Safe Zones are for rookies doing missions. Safe Zone towns production buildings should turn off if the Nation owns a certain number of other ports. 

[randommexi]

what I want to say....

 

sorry, did not take the time to wade through the lame posts in this thread.

simple solution,

stop playing on the global server, come play on the EU server.  Problem solved.  no merge need, no special set ups for port battles needed.  all done.

 

what I should say....

 

if a server merge is to happen, and there is going to be a 24  port battle clock.  this game will end.  period.

so, we have to have a structured port battle window that helps make it viable for people around to world or most of the world to be able to compete in RvR.

My suggestion, have 2 port battle windows.  the current window is 5pm-10pm UK time.  I suggest a slight change to this.  make it 5pm-11pm UK time.  then add a second window from 10pm-4am UK time.  Upon capture of the port the owning clan may set the port battle window to which ever one they prefer.  also i'd suggest not allowing for port battles for 1-2 days of the week.  my suggestion would be Monday and Tuesday.

[IndianaGeoff]

They don't want to just play on EU.  They want EU to lose it's PB timers.

[Archaos]

On 11/22/2017 at 4:36 AM, randommexi said:

what I want to say....

 

sorry, did not take the time to wade through the lame posts in this thread.

simple solution,

stop playing on the global server, come play on the EU server.  Problem solved.  no merge need, no special set ups for port battles needed.  all done.

 

what I should say....

 

if a server merge is to happen, and there is going to be a 24  port battle clock.  this game will end.  period.

so, we have to have a structured port battle window that helps make it viable for people around to world or most of the world to be able to compete in RvR.

My suggestion, have 2 port battle windows.  the current window is 5pm-10pm UK time.  I suggest a slight change to this.  make it 5pm-11pm UK time.  then add a second window from 10pm-4am UK time.  Upon capture of the port the owning clan may set the port battle window to which ever one they prefer.  also i'd suggest not allowing for port battles for 1-2 days of the week.  my suggestion would be Monday and Tuesday.

I would suggest maybe that you should read through the lame posts in this thread, at least then you would realize that similar and a lot better suggestions have been put forward already. What about players whose prime time is outside the time windows you are suggesting?

[Norfolk nChance]

On ‎11‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 11:43 PM, IndianaGeoff said:

They don't want to just play on EU.  They want EU to lose it's PB timers.

 

this is simply no true. Well from me it isn't. This is an idea I posted a week ago...

 

It’s interesting reading this thread, more are looking seriously at the problem. Understanding the problem from an [PvP EU] perspective (I believe) was the blatant use of the nightflip in the past helped a clan railroad its way to victory that couldn’t be defended properly due to time coverage.

The Port Battles in your own ports were always triggered at 3am your time on a Tuesday morning.

 

We fixed this issue simply by only allowing a Port Battle triggered when our clan mostly plays.  

Right now [PvP EU] after driving up HOSTILITY 100% will allow for a PB between UTC 17:00 & 22:00 when most EU players will be on. So, this immediately stops the EU clans getting Night flips.

the idea...

If on any merge or not a clan must select one of three HOME time slots it resides in. For me living Hong Kong, but most of the clan coming from the UK I choose EU time for [ELITE]. For [ARMED] most are Australian so would choose the ASIA time. And so on…

 

 

Right now, if [ARMED] attacked an [ELITE] PORT in [PvP GLOBAL] they’d choose early ASIA time to Night Flip [ELITE] which makes sense if not sporting. However, if the Port Battle defaults always to the DEFENDER it would pop but within the EU time zone. Look at this chart below see if this makes sense… The UTC time is against summer times for the other countries so you might see so off by an hour.

If [ARMED] wanted an [ELITE] PORT they’d need to be prepared to fight outside their time zone. [ELITE] can’t complain as its in their play window. If keeping the 22-hour fixer [ARMED] could make it as early as UTC 17:00 but that’s it…

What if [ARMED] wanted to attack a US base clan…?

The windows give the US Clan protection, but the weekends you can see become vulnerable…

Not a perfect solution…

It’s not a perfect solution but actually works easier than having fixed period times on the MAP leading to resource distribution issues and leading to more game play mechanic issues. Using the DEFENDER as default Aggressor always pays up it stops the night flip.

Coding wise also is easier do than splitting up areas and resetting resources.

 

Let me know what you think

 

Norfolk nChance.

 

Edited September 26, 2018 by Norfolk nChance

[randommexi]

3 hours ago, Archaos said:

I would suggest maybe that you should read through the lame posts in this thread, at least then you would realize that similar and a lot better suggestions have been put forward already. What about players whose prime time is outside the time windows you are suggesting?

try to accommodate everyone and all you'll do is piss off everyone.  its a no win situation.  why do you think EU is doing alright?