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Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Thoughts on naval combat
wrms
Member
I have been thinking about naval combat a lot lately, and what I would most like to see to make it as fun and engaging as possible. I know that the designs for how it will function in game are likely already in place, but I thought it might be fun to have a discussion about it anyways, and who knows, maybe some aspects of that discussion could influence the direction of the development.
There are two points that I think could make naval combat and PVP in general on the open seas very interesting: ship specialization, and meaningful ship to ship combat.
I'll start with ship specialization. I don't think that a linear upgrade path for ships would be my ideal scenario. From reading the wiki a bit, it seems like this is the path that will be taken, allowing ships to upgrade components related to movement, durability, speed, turn rate, hit points, and defensive or offensive abilities. The end result of this kind of system is that there is a "best" ship, one which is fully upgraded in every component and is ultimately better in every aspect to another ship which has fewer upgrades. This makes sense with how we usually think of gearing up in an MMO, but I think there is another way to look at this system which could create more interesting dynamics. I think this could be particularly interesting given the fact that the seas will be an open PVP area.
Instead of having a set component for each aspect of a ships control which is upgraded in a linear fashion, I propose this idea. Let each ship have a set number of universal upgrade slots that can be filled with components relating to any given function of a ships performance. For example, if I want to spend some time out on the open seas, but I don't want to get PKed constantly just because it is an open PVP area, I can dedicate all of my upgrades to speed so that I can outrun any potential PKers. There would be trade offs, without any upgrades dedicated to defense or offense, my ship would not be properly outfitted to fight any sea monsters I might encounter, and I might not have any cargo space to transport goods, if that was something a ship could do, but at least I could avoid PVP if I didn't want to PVP.
As I imagine this kind of scenario, I can already see the first issue that comes up with it, which is that PVPers will simply spec their ships for maximum speed so that no one can outrun them. This brings me to my second point: meaningful ship to ship combat.
Without going on too long of a tangent, this idea was largely inspired by my personal experiences in Archeage. In that game, at least in solo or group scenarios, ships fighting other ships with cannons wasn't really a factor. It was simply a matter of getting close enough to board the enemy and then fight them with traditional PVP combat.
So in my ideal system, ship to ship combat would play a pivotal role. If every PKer fully speced their ship for maximum speed, that could be countered by dedicating some of your upgrade space towards installing cannons/ballista/potion launchers. The PKer ship would then be at risk of being sunk, or having their members on deck be killed or seriously wounded by long range fire before they could engage. As a result, PVPers would have to carefully consider their ship build to balance their ability to chase their targets with their ability to engage in ship combat. This would also extend to PVE players, who would have to balance their desire to escape from PVP with their desire to transport cargo or engage in PVE content on the seas.
These ideas could be extrapolated out to many facets of a ships performance, and even into more social aspects of gameplay. Suppose your guild wants to transport a massive haul of loot over the sea, you can dedicate one ship towards huge cargo capacity, and then another ship or two dedicated to maximizing defense and offense. You won't be fast, but that won't matter, because your defender ships can easily keep pace with your cargo ship, and will easily outgun an opportunistic PVPer who is speced for speed.
This also brings PVPers back into the risk vs reward conversation. One of the things I disliked most about the open PVP on the sea concept was that it violates the risk vs reward concept. PVPers on the sea don't really have a lot of risk, they probably aren't carrying materials that can be looted, and they can't get corruption, so it's really just reward for them. This kind of system will bring the concept of risk vs reward back to PVP on the open seas. You can spec a ship for maximum speed so that no one can outrun you, but you risk them blasting your ship to pieces because you didn't spec any offense. Or you can spec for a more balanced ship that can handle a naval combat encounter, but you risk that certain ships speced for speed will escape you.
I'm sure there are some flaws in this idea, but having thought about it a lot over the past few weeks, I just find it to be more exciting than a traditional upgrade path. I fear that naval content in AoC will be shut down by PVPers who will dedicate all of their resources towards building the best ship possible so that they can dominate the open PVP area of the game, making it inaccessible to anyone else. This system is not about nerfing PVPers, it's about adding some complexity to the system so that the seas can't be indiscriminately dominated by PVPers with no recourse for anyone else. Risk vs reward: you can be fast enough to catch every target, or you can be strong enough to sink every ship, or you can find some balance that works best for you, but you can't be the best at everything all the time.
As a final note to head off the inevitable criticism calling me a carebear: I am a PVPer. I have exclusively played on PVP servers in every MMO I've played since I first started playing Everquest in the year 2000. If you need easy PVP handed to you where you have every advantage, and these ideas scare you, you're just a coward and you need to git gud.
There are two points that I think could make naval combat and PVP in general on the open seas very interesting: ship specialization, and meaningful ship to ship combat.
I'll start with ship specialization. I don't think that a linear upgrade path for ships would be my ideal scenario. From reading the wiki a bit, it seems like this is the path that will be taken, allowing ships to upgrade components related to movement, durability, speed, turn rate, hit points, and defensive or offensive abilities. The end result of this kind of system is that there is a "best" ship, one which is fully upgraded in every component and is ultimately better in every aspect to another ship which has fewer upgrades. This makes sense with how we usually think of gearing up in an MMO, but I think there is another way to look at this system which could create more interesting dynamics. I think this could be particularly interesting given the fact that the seas will be an open PVP area.
Instead of having a set component for each aspect of a ships control which is upgraded in a linear fashion, I propose this idea. Let each ship have a set number of universal upgrade slots that can be filled with components relating to any given function of a ships performance. For example, if I want to spend some time out on the open seas, but I don't want to get PKed constantly just because it is an open PVP area, I can dedicate all of my upgrades to speed so that I can outrun any potential PKers. There would be trade offs, without any upgrades dedicated to defense or offense, my ship would not be properly outfitted to fight any sea monsters I might encounter, and I might not have any cargo space to transport goods, if that was something a ship could do, but at least I could avoid PVP if I didn't want to PVP.
As I imagine this kind of scenario, I can already see the first issue that comes up with it, which is that PVPers will simply spec their ships for maximum speed so that no one can outrun them. This brings me to my second point: meaningful ship to ship combat.
Without going on too long of a tangent, this idea was largely inspired by my personal experiences in Archeage. In that game, at least in solo or group scenarios, ships fighting other ships with cannons wasn't really a factor. It was simply a matter of getting close enough to board the enemy and then fight them with traditional PVP combat.
So in my ideal system, ship to ship combat would play a pivotal role. If every PKer fully speced their ship for maximum speed, that could be countered by dedicating some of your upgrade space towards installing cannons/ballista/potion launchers. The PKer ship would then be at risk of being sunk, or having their members on deck be killed or seriously wounded by long range fire before they could engage. As a result, PVPers would have to carefully consider their ship build to balance their ability to chase their targets with their ability to engage in ship combat. This would also extend to PVE players, who would have to balance their desire to escape from PVP with their desire to transport cargo or engage in PVE content on the seas.
These ideas could be extrapolated out to many facets of a ships performance, and even into more social aspects of gameplay. Suppose your guild wants to transport a massive haul of loot over the sea, you can dedicate one ship towards huge cargo capacity, and then another ship or two dedicated to maximizing defense and offense. You won't be fast, but that won't matter, because your defender ships can easily keep pace with your cargo ship, and will easily outgun an opportunistic PVPer who is speced for speed.
This also brings PVPers back into the risk vs reward conversation. One of the things I disliked most about the open PVP on the sea concept was that it violates the risk vs reward concept. PVPers on the sea don't really have a lot of risk, they probably aren't carrying materials that can be looted, and they can't get corruption, so it's really just reward for them. This kind of system will bring the concept of risk vs reward back to PVP on the open seas. You can spec a ship for maximum speed so that no one can outrun you, but you risk them blasting your ship to pieces because you didn't spec any offense. Or you can spec for a more balanced ship that can handle a naval combat encounter, but you risk that certain ships speced for speed will escape you.
I'm sure there are some flaws in this idea, but having thought about it a lot over the past few weeks, I just find it to be more exciting than a traditional upgrade path. I fear that naval content in AoC will be shut down by PVPers who will dedicate all of their resources towards building the best ship possible so that they can dominate the open PVP area of the game, making it inaccessible to anyone else. This system is not about nerfing PVPers, it's about adding some complexity to the system so that the seas can't be indiscriminately dominated by PVPers with no recourse for anyone else. Risk vs reward: you can be fast enough to catch every target, or you can be strong enough to sink every ship, or you can find some balance that works best for you, but you can't be the best at everything all the time.
As a final note to head off the inevitable criticism calling me a carebear: I am a PVPer. I have exclusively played on PVP servers in every MMO I've played since I first started playing Everquest in the year 2000. If you need easy PVP handed to you where you have every advantage, and these ideas scare you, you're just a coward and you need to git gud.
0
Comments
Want speed? Gotta sacrifice defense and offense.
Want offense? Gotta sacrifice some speed and have space for the weapons.
Want defense? Sacrifice speed and space. And ideally there'd be some mechanism that can push boarding players off the ship once in a while, but it would take up a lot of space on the deck so you'd be limited in offensive capacity and wouldn't have too much space for people either.
And obviously, if you want big size ship - you're trash at speed, but you have a ton of space for pretty much everything else.
That reminds me of one other thing I wanted to mention. I don't think large ships should automatically be faster than smaller ships. If you have a galleon with 40 players, you already have way more firepower than a small ship, both in terms of the number of cannons or whatever the projectile weapon is, but also in terms of the number of boarders you can bring to the table. You don't also need to be faster than smaller ships. When it comes to competing for raid targets, that galleon will be superior, as it should be, but they don't need to have an automatic advantage in speed. I only bring this up because some games I've played want to favor big ships in every aspect.
Let smaller ships have a place on the seas. Not a dominant place, I'm not at all arguing that small ships need to be nearly as effective as large ships for conquering krakens or laying siege to ocean nodes. Don't make it so that a galleon can easily chase down and destroy every little ship that sets sail. If they get caught in a galleons broadside, sure, they should be destroyed. But at least give the smaller ships the chance to run away.