Patch 14: Part 2 experimental patch increasing realism in ship behavior

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 hour ago, Anolytic said:

Yes. The heavy Rattlesnake has no chance against the Mercury.

Depends on the set up and captain though to be honest. I can see a good set up on a Mercury actually beating a H Rattler.  I think it's more the fact the open deck on the Mercury means that you can kill the crew off very easily.

1 hour ago, Landsman said:

I'm no Portbattle or RvR expert but 10 x 6pd broadside, 1875 sidearmor and 45 thickness vs 13 x 6pd, 2100 side and 47 thickness seems pretty much in favour of RSH. You can of course load carronades on the merc but it's not like the enemy can't see that...

Not sure how ya'll do it on EU but we actually ran our H Rattlers with 18 lbrs for brawling in port battles.  Than stack reload and accuracy mods on top of that and your very deadly within 250m.  You will out shut and damage any 6 lbr.  I can pretty much keep some one in shock and sink them in 3 broad sides with only 29 sec reload on my guns. We tend to bring Navy Brigs with longs to take care of the distance fights and they make great rams for breaking bow sprites of H Rattlers in battle.  As above I think it's just the open top and lower HP's (125 really isn't a lot) that makes it where folks don't use the Mercury as much any more.  

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

Only on PvE server.

Ability to acquire wasa on a pve server will be added next week together with the removal of permits for majority of vessels on both servers. permits will remain for first rates and second rates

50 minutes ago, [HRE] Lanfire said:

@admin

 @Ink

1. Nice Patch, good work

 

2. Guys, you should really stop drinking so much Vodka

Victory marks only for players wo fight in PB?

Sorry, it is now almost impossible for small / solo players, to come to big ships, without buying them overpriced in the shop.
Sometimes you might really think you do not have all the cups in the closet anymore. Please also think about the small / solo players.

 

Sorry, but that had to be said now !

Did you read the patch notes, you can still get VM's for trade for PvP Marks, Basiclly VM's are going to be reserved for the folks that actually go out and PvP/RvR not just sit in safe zones and kill AI.   So small clans and solo players can still get the same things by just OW PvPing.

23 minutes ago, Hethwill said:

Given US hours, I guess you'll see more at US hours  not at EU time.

Remember that this patch just dropped and while we seen a slight increase it's been weekdays for us US players.  You will prob see a EU Prime time rise on weekends too cause that is mid day for us and many of us can get on and play since we aren't working on Sat/Sun.  I have noticed the SEA players time been way higher too.  I think all around it's been nice seeing more numbers.   Folks also forget even though they only see 50-100 players more on the list that is actually more like 500-1000 more players if you count folks that log in and out all day long. Most folks only pop on for a few hours at most so that a good bump up of players.

[[HRE] Lanfire]

2 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Did you read the patch notes, you can still get VM's for trade for PvP Marks, Basiclly VM's are going to be reserved for the folks that actually go out and PvP/RvR not just sit in safe zones and kill AI.   So small clans and solo players can still get the same things by just OW PvPing.

Yes i do. Then try to change pvp-Marks to Victory marks or otherwise. dont work

[Red Dragon 13]

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

Only on PvE server.

Admin said both servers

[Jean Ribault]

1 minute ago, Red Dragon 13 said:

Admin said both servers

This is the first and only love given to the PVE server in a very long time.  It is a much appreciated gesture, whether token or not.  

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 minute ago, [HRE] Lanfire said:

Yes i do. Then try to change pvp-Marks to Victory marks or otherwise. dont work

Are your PvP marks in your captain chest or in your warehouse? You need to take them out of your captain chest for it to work.  Other wise you might need to f11 that. I don't have enough PvP marks on me right now to test it.

[Landsman]

3 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Did you read the patch notes, you can still get VM's for trade for PvP Marks, Basiclly VM's are going to be reserved for the folks that actually go out and PvP/RvR not just sit in safe zones and kill AI.   So small clans and solo players can still get the same things by just OW PvPing.

I just think the balance is a bit off... I read some comment saying it is 100 PvP marks for one victory mark, which seems out of proportion when you consider the number one zerg nation getting 3 VM for free every week by just showing up at some PB, win or lose.... thats potentially 300 PvP marks every week for just one PB that you don't even have to win... if I understood it correctly.

The idea is decent but the ratio VM : PvP is way off... if anything sinking enemy ships ( OW or RvR ) and the resulting PvP marks should be what makes VM available to you as a player and the RvR leaderboard VMs should be a nice bonus to that but not the main source of VMs...

[Sir Texas Sir]

16 minutes ago, OneEyedSnake said:

I think we can work with this. Solution for the player base: if you are a pvper and have tons of pvp marks help the pve grinders out by sharing those victory marks. PvP helps PvE Grind, helps Crafters. 

I see it more that the PvE grinders can share some of there mods and loot drops.  Many PvPers don't want to grind to get mods, so it's a win win situation now the PvPers have something of value other than gold to trade for items.

 

1 minute ago, Landsman said:

I just think the balance is a bit off... I read some comment saying it is 100 PvP marks for one victory mark, which seems out of proportion when you consider the number one zerg nation getting 3 VM for free every week by just showing up at some PB, win or lose.... thats potentially 300 PvP marks every week for just one PB that you don't even have to win... if I understood it correctly.

The idea is decent but the ratio VM : PvP is way off... if anything sinking enemy ships ( OW or RvR ) and the resulting PvP marks should be what makes VM available to you as a player and the RvR leaderboard VMs should be a nice bonus to that but not the main source of VMs...

Yah but that number can be tweeked if they want to very easy.  It hopefully starts with a clean slate so that you have to from this point forward be in a port battle.  IF they get them just for past fights and against AI than it's kinda not fair.  I honestly think they should of did a port wipe when they merged the servers to make it fair for all.   

[Jean Ribault]

2 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

I see it more that the PvE grinders can share some of there mods and loot drops.  Many PvPers don't want to grind to get mods, so it's a win win situation now the PvPers have something of value other than gold to trade for items....

 

+1

Good suggestion.

[Aster]

I thought the current system was fine the way it was. Mods were still a pain to get for ships but it wasn't a crushing loss when you lost a ship. I feel that making ships much more valuable wont encourage pvp it will encourage ganking/ just not fighting evenish fights. Its not worth it to lose days/weeks worth of pvp marks to use the ship in pvp. Also while giving the players that "participate" in successful port battle marks is better then the old system of everyone in the nation getting them. It still encourages people to join the already strong nations making them stronger. Why would you fight for an underdog nation if your efforts give you no reward when you could switch to the top nation and get 300 pvp marks worth of rewards every week? A better system would be not even dealing with the nations and the players that go out and fight port battles get the rewards regardless of their nations ranking.

[TheLoneWolf]

8 hours ago, admin said:

what about VMs for pvp marks? I have heard you guys are active in PVP. 

@adminYour VM system is flawed imo.  Rewarding the largest 3 nations will only hinder game diversity.  You added new nations a few months ago do you want to revert to only 3 nations?  They are emerging but do not have the player base to field multiple pb fleets.  Your suggestion of ganking up on one nation will only lead to the problem that global experienced and which lead to its demise, namely, it was whole server vs pirates with exploits by nations tagging each other etc.  This lead to frustration and most pirates quitting or going to pvp eu.  I know I was one of them and left with a few while a number of players just stopped playing.  I understand your desire to increase rvr action.  Limiting it to top 3 nations will render this next to impossible for new nations with low player bases.  Also, with port timers system, north american players have to attack during eu times which makes it difficult to gather numbers for attackers when defenders can be at their top population level.  This is an issue with no easy fix.  Why do you not give a vm for each port battle that is successfully won or defended to each participant.  This way all nations benefit, not the largest 3 and you increase rvr.  For example, if you are in nation like Poland, Prussia Russia or some, there is no point doing pbs as you will never reach the top 3 positions since you can field at best 1 rvr fleet whereas other can field 3.  The end result if that players will migrate to other nations further compounding the issue.  If the amount of VM is too much then increase VM for ships and give more VM.  Also, ships like wasa and hermione should also have the option of VM instead of only pvp marks.  Some players do only RVR while others do only PVP and they should not be deprived of ships because of this.  Your hope of having VM and PVP being traded is wishful thinking.  Also, to level the playing field, increase the amount of books that go into refits.  I have done a lot of grinding to open slots and you no longer get treatise on sailing, square rigs, saltpeter etc.  These mods are used to make refits and drops should be increased to encourage their use and trade for PVP and VM.  To illustrate the current issue, look at the books for sale in markets of each nation and you will notice an absence of any of these books.  This should not be the case and it should not cost 4 million to get one of these books!

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

53 minutes ago, Tac said:

Yeah was on late last night left with 215 on was that normal for global?

it was way less than that in old G

[Quineloe]

On 12/21/2017 at 12:41 PM, admin said:

don't forget please that majority of ports have limited BR and a lot of them won't even let first rate in.

4800 is enough to bring in a few First Rates to be the deciding factor in the port battle. 2400 BR ports are few and far between, and there's not a 2400 BR region where non-victorymark players can fight over. They're just scattered across the entire map and experience has already shown us that 2400 BR ports of importance will be decided by screening anyways. Not like it's hard to just overpower a 2400 BR fleet.

You made First Rates the best ships in the game, hands down, especially in group engagements. All the completely arbitrary values you have assigned such as armor, armor thickness, mast values, you favored First Rates over the other ships. Second and Third rates have less armor, less thickness, are easier to demast and have significantly fewer crew so they can't stand up to first rates, and anything smaller just loses main masts from direct fire in single broadsides and therefore can't compete at all.

And now you're hiding these ships behind the PVP mark wall, and by no means is it a small wall. 100 PVP marks is an insame sum to acquire for 99% of your player base (and you know this) - but one faction is getting *showered* in these victory marks every week. Currently the map says this will be us, and tbh it already is us (I have 10 of them just to myself at this point), and anyone who can't get in on this biggest Win More Bandwagon I have ever seen in competitive gaming will be struggling to field first rate fleets that can take on already established first rate fleets.

Making the Wasa a PVP mark only ship instead of balancing its BR (indefatigable 44 guns is 250 BR!)  is just the other big Win More change you've put here. Those who have a Wasa and win in PVP with it get more marks to get more Wasas, and those who don't just get farmed by this god mode ship.

I quit the game the first time you decided 500g per crew member was a good price. It took you months to realize that mistake and it cost you half of the remaining player base. Am I exaggarating? My last solid prime time screenshot from that time was 23-08-16 at 23:15 CET and you had 824 players online. Today, you have exactly half of that.  Merge is already over and on a Friday night we're not even back to the 500 players we briefly had when port BR limits were added.

I predict these changes will have the exact same effect.

[Quineloe]

On 12/21/2017 at 1:38 PM, admin said:

if you capture 12 3 points ports (many controlled by one nation - lets call it Nation A) you will achieve the following

is the information on which port is worth 3 points even accessible in the game...

[King of Crowns]

@admin to many people rather cry on the forums than play the game is what it seems like to me. 

just goes to show its okay if a game is hard. but its not okay if game is easy and then is made hard via patches. you gave them safe zones. and now they don't want to leave them. 

 

Edited December 23, 2017 by King of Crowns

[Quineloe]

On 12/21/2017 at 4:45 PM, admin said:

if asking questions is a word fight for you we don't know how conversation is possible. But we will try again.

If Russia attracted players why did not prussia? Is it national leaders responsibility? or a game responsibility? Why Rovers and LIONS left prussia? @z4ys @Sella22?
Why russia gained players ?
@Anolytic thoughts?

Russia back then is Russia today. You know you have a very large Russian playerbase, and most of them jumped over to the Russian nation.

Prussia on the other hand is not Germany. In fact, Saupreiss (Prussian Pig) is a common insult even today in Bavaria for people living in the Northern half of Germany, and they do not associate in any way with Prussia. If anything, there's mild hostility. That's why we stayed in Sweden. I don't know who the national leaders of a nation are that has zero members, so I'm pretty sure they have no responsibility. But that is pretty moot. You have easily 5 or 6 nations that will never ever be in the top 3, and therefore the RVR game will not happen for them.

[Seraphic Radiance]

4 hours ago, victor said:

Did he told that thing before or after having got quite some money from a lot of testers? 

 

You know the answer. 

[Quineloe]

On 12/21/2017 at 5:07 PM, Valentine Karrde said:

Potbs, an age of sail game that got rvr about as right as you can, did this: the nation that won, got conquest points for writs for refit ships etc. the next three nations got them as well. The underdog nations got bonuses to money, experience, and resource requirement  reductions. All nations could make all ships but the ones who won couldn't refit certain non game breaking ships through the conquest marks. People re rolled to under dog nations all the time to get the bonuses. The winning nations got their pretty refits that didn't change the balance of power or give them a greater advantage. Everyone was happy and the balance of power was constantly shifting. 

Unlike game labs, flying labs software understood that people respond better to the carrot than the stick. Punishing weaker nations just causes people to re roll to the stronger ones and never achieves balance. 

Dude, FLS was an a-grade clown show who got nothing right. Conquest marks were irrelevant because all they bought were the damage resistance modules, and once you had those, you never needed them again. FLS was also the clown show that thought it a good idea to add a quest to the game, kill 10 enemy players, and the reward was 25 MoV. If a full group ganked a single player, every player of that group got a quest progress, essentially making 6vs1 ganking the most profitable activity in the game. There was absolutely nothing to be gained out of losing a fight in that game, there was not even an exp reward for damage dealt as this game currently has, let alone gold (as this game used to have when there was a lot of players playing)

Oh and let's not forget one thing: FLS was the clown show with a morbidly obese "bacon queen" banning everyone from the forum who criticized the game in any way, most players were on their third or fourth forum account by the time Sony pulled out and told FLS to die in a fire and everyone was bragging about how many "Forum MoV" they had earned already.
 

Admin may get some things wrong with this game, but comparing this to POBS is a completely unjustified insult. We're two years into the open world game, and POBS was by far deader after two years. It was a really rotting, smelling corpse at that point, condensed to two servers with no one around except a handful of raceboat gankers. The only thing they eventually did right was to just outright remove second and first rates from the game as being too powerful and too grindey, and then they made a step back from that again and failed again.

If you think POBS was in any way a success, look at where the key developers are today. They're doing Facebook games. Facebook games. Because no one would ever hire them for any real game anymore at this point.

[John Sheppard]

On 7/12/2017 at 12:29 PM, admin said:

 

• • victory marks will only be given to the players who:
    • Have at least one lord protector status in at least one port by the end of the round - bringing his nation a control point or,
    • Participated in a successful port battle during the conquest round (even if the port was lost later on) - bringing his nation a battle point

and what about all the people who helped with hostility generation and screening? it seems that we are back at the same system as the old Conquest marks if not worse.. i mean what is different? you only get VM if you participate personally in the port battles (if i understand the patch notes correctly) and that only if your nation is in top 3.. 

in contrast to my other commnets i'll try to be helpfull this time so how about :

the entire CLAN gets Victory Marks directly in CLAN WAREHOUSE (i'm sure it's possible same way as the port tax goes in the clan) i won't say 1 VM for each member coz it would be too much but how about 1/2 of the number of members in the clan? then it will be up to the clan leader/officers to split the VM fairly for all the people who participated in screening etc .. otherwise the screeners don't get anything and have no reason to continue screening risking their ships in the process

suppose only 2 people from a clan of 20 go in the PB and another 10 are screening (quite usual) with the current system if those 2 people get 1 VM each there isn't much they can split with the other 10 right? 

so pls think about it .. this might be a good idea ofc still doesn't solve the problem that all the other nations are FUBAR along with all the new players who will never be able to get decent ships therefore won't be able to participate in the port battles

[Christoph]

20 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

Russia back then is Russia today. You know you have a very large Russian playerbase, and most of them jumped over to the Russian nation.

Prussia on the other hand is not Germany. In fact, Saupreiss (Prussian Pig) is a common insult even today in Bavaria for people living in the Northern half of Germany, and they do not associate in any way with Prussia. If anything, there's mild hostility. That's why we stayed in Sweden. I don't know who the national leaders of a nation are that has zero members, so I'm pretty sure they have no responsibility. But that is pretty moot. You have easily 5 or 6 nations that will never ever be in the top 3, and therefore the RVR game will not happen for them.

The most players in the Russian Nation are not Russian! 😉

[NoSwede_IAm]

11 hours ago, Guenwhyvar said:

There are some people playing this game who really like it to succeed. 

Having DEVs pull a STUPID STUNT like with the Victory-marks is making it really hard to keep people in the game. |

We're doing our best, but this is just making it impossible.

Game-balance is something really sensitive. Changing something this big is NOT helping with the balance of the game and is pushing people away.

We need MORE players, not less of them.

my word !

please reconsider this change !

Its really hard to deal with this.
please ..

[Quineloe]

4 hours ago, OneEyedSnake said:

I think we can work with this. Solution for the player base: if you are a pvper and have tons of pvp marks help the pve grinders out by sharing those victory marks. PvP helps PvE Grind, helps Crafters. 

Do you have hundreds of PVP marks to supply your nation with a full first rate fleet?

The funny thing is: we do have another asset wipe and map wipe coming, correct?

So the first nation to win the map will get showered in victory marks and immediately field full fleets of first rates again, while the other nations will struggle to combine enough PVP marks together to maybe match that with 1-2 first rates of their own. The mass first rate nation will then always attack the nations that are closest to taking #1 from them, making sure no one gets ahead of them and continues raking in more and more first rates. The snowball will be completely out of control.

[OneEyedSnake]

2 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

Do you have hundreds of PVP marks to supply your nation with a full first rate fleet?

The funny thing is: we do have another asset wipe and map wipe coming, correct?

So the first nation to win the map will get showered in victory marks and immediately field full fleets of first rates again, while the other nations will struggle to combine enough PVP marks together to maybe match that with 1-2 first rates of their own. The mass first rate nation will then always attack the nations that are closest to taking #1 from them, making sure no one gets ahead of them and continues raking in more and more first rates. The snowball will be completely out of control.

its easy to get upwards of 30 pvp marks in a mid sized pvp battle. combine that with a few others, and you have a 1st rate

[Powderhorn]

Give it three weeks over the holidays.  Let people play through it, see what happens. If Sweden doesn't budge, if the top 3 remain relatively stagnant, I suspect things will change.  Give it a chance first.

[John Sheppard]

2 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

Do you have hundreds of PVP marks to supply your nation with a full first rate fleet?

The funny thing is: we do have another asset wipe and map wipe coming, correct?

So the first nation to win the map will get showered in victory marks and immediately field full fleets of first rates again, while the other nations will struggle to combine enough PVP marks together to maybe match that with 1-2 first rates of their own. The mass first rate nation will then always attack the nations that are closest to taking #1 from them, making sure no one gets ahead of them and continues raking in more and more first rates. The snowball will be completely out of control.

that reminds me of what the situation just after the full wipe half a year ago when the first nations to help eachother with Conquest marks (setting up port battles for eachother and not showing up) were far ahead of the rest.. i remember the spanish had 30 L'oceans at the time that brits had 2-3 Agamemnons .. there was nothing the brits could do to stop the spanish when they decided to attack except use the basic cutter fireships 

this will repat again after the wipe i suspect

[Quineloe]

3 minutes ago, OneEyedSnake said:

its easy to get upwards of 30 pvp marks in a mid sized pvp battle. combine that with a few others, and you have a 1st rate

That is not my experience. At the Sweden vs BF battle at Higuain I scored 2 kills and 4 assists on First and Second Rates and I walked away with a mere 13 PVP marks.

30 PVP average per player marks is impossible because not a single ship is worth 30 marks. If you made 30 marks in a battle,  everyone else on your team made next to nothing.  Every time a first rate sinks, it's 75 to 77 PVP marks destroyed.

But you didn't answer my question: do you have hundreds of PVP marks just sitting around? From what I know, even the very best PVPers with us have earned a few hundred PVP marks in *total*. and they want to use that stuff for themselves, too.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Quineloe