Thoughts on no hirable sailor NPCs?

WorldBreak

In yesterday's stream Steven confirmed that there would be no hirable sailor/mercenary npcs for player ships. What are your thoughts on this? I personally think they can be implemented without affecting the social/group focus that they are going for on bigger ships by making it so that you will be at a clear disadvantage against a group of players. For example you could make it so that you will only be able to fire off all cannons at once in a sort of cone shape kind of like in AC Black Flag which would cause plenty of your shots to miss as opposed to being able to have your friends man each cannon individually and have well placed shots that will cause serious damage. Same with the sails or any other mechanic that they add, you could have npcs that can do it but always to a slower/lesser degree than an actual player, that way there is still a clear advantage to running with your guild or friends and basically making it a requirement for people who seriously want to get into naval combat or maybe go for a rare drop out in the deep ocean but you still can put up a bit of a fight and have a chance at survival if your just crossing the continent or out exploring a bit on your own.

Liniker

Very happy about it, ashes is a massive multiplayer online game, you should find friends to play with

ships are player vehicles, not NPC, the biggest ships are raid-sized ships, because a raid has 40 players

WorldBreak

I agree with Galleons being a bit too much and that you shouldn't be able to have npcs on those specially during raid content, maybe just limited functionality outside of raids like just being able to move it during normal gameplay but i disagree with blocking everyday content because "is an mmo and you need to find people to play with", an mmo is a massively shared world, it should be encouraged to play with other people by making hard and engaging content that you can't clear on your own, not forced because you can't do it otherwise, specially when players will be introduced very early on into ocean content as you'll get the quest to build your first ship around level 15 if i recall correctly and i might be mistaken on this but from what i've seen the personal vessels are essentially just fishing boats and it doesn't look like you can put cannons or have any sort of way to protect yourself on them so most people will want to upgrade to a frigate as soon as possible, and with a large portion of mmo players preferring to go through the MSQ and exploring the world at their own pace, or maybe just having a couple hours to play so you can't really gather a group to go with you i think it's a bit ridiculous to limit them to the smallest ship class and put them at anyone's mercy until they join a guild, essentially putting them off from going into the ocean

Taleof2Cities

Make no mistake, @WorldBreak … the high seas are going to be a dangerous free for all.

You’re looking for an “exemption period” to do solo PvE activities in a PvP zone.

That just isn’t going to happen.

The sooner you find friends the better.

WorldBreak

@Taleof2Cities I'm well aware how dangerous the open seas are going to be. I'm not looking for any “exemption period” or anything of the sort, one of the things i love the most about this game is the open world pvp and im more than happy to take part in it. As a matter of fact that is exactly my issue ... as it currently doesn't seem like you'll be able to do much pvp or even try to defend yourself if you decide to go out into the ocean on your own and pvp does ensue, your only option is to hope you see them on the distance in time and run away. Which i guess is realistic but it doesn't really make for engaging content for either the attacker or the defender in my opinion. I'm definitely going to get some friends and do a bit of pirating eventually but as it stands im sure the novelty of that its going to wear off quick if they don't add a way for solo players to fight back, cause preach "find friends" as you may the majority of people you'll find out in the ocean on a normal bases will be either solo or a very small crew that won't be able to actually put of a decent fight against a full pirate crew without npcs

Hinotori

If you make a weaker auto system everyone just ends up using the META approach of having friends man ships anyway.

This would just be a waste of developers time.

I'm fully expecting the smaller 15 man ships to be faster than the 40 man ones as a counterplay.

As for solo roamers... risk and reward. You can go sail out on your own and may find some great stuff. But a gang can come kick your teeth in any time. That's the dice roll you make.

Barab

I was the og on this question. In Atlas you could capture and/or buy npcs that cost a rental fee to main sails as well as main cannons otherwise every mechanic had to be player activated and controlled.... Players handling said ship mechanics were always better, more responsive, could repair the ship etc but having npcs you could go out on your own. Totally fine having ships all player driven....just need to get on a ship during testing to give true proper feedback.

WorldBreak

@Natasha I get where you coming from but the goal of npcs at least for me is to make naval combat more engaging or even happen to begin with, not put you on equal footing with a ship full of players, that should always be the meta and if you can get a bunch of your friends together and sail out you should have a clear advantage like @Barab mentioned and i also said in one of my previous posts.

The way the system is right now you basically can't even go out on anything bigger than a personal vessel unless you have multiple people with you, so that means that for actual meaningful combat between 2 ships to even happen you have to get a bunch of your friends to go out sailing with you and try to get lucky and run into another big group of players who went out around the same time. The odds of that happening on a day to day bases with how big the ocean is going to be even with 10,000 people per server is not that high. The only exception would maybe be naval guilds fighting each other or hunting pirates but even that its not going to happen that often, so what i think is most likely going to happen is pirates are just going to shoot down solo fishing boats or under crewed frigates

That's why i think they should add npcs, it gives solo players or smaller crews the ability to sail bigger ships and actually engage in naval combat ... it's still risk and reward and just as much of a dice roll cause the other ship could be full of actual players, in which case i would have no problem getting my teeth kick in by the gang if i chose to stay and fight but at least i would have the option to fight back and engage in pvp

Varkun

Personally I say no to NPC's on ships. What is there to stop a group of players in their raid sized ships crewed with NPC's just sailing around crushing all around them. Yes they may not be as accurate or efficient as a fully PC crewed ship but numbers and sheer firepower of several raid sized ships could be a telling factor.

Just my thoughts.

WorldBreak

Money. I agree with Galleons being a bit too much like i said on my second post but i think it can be balanced by adjusting sailor resources with some testing. You're not just going to be able to get a bunch of npcs and put them on your ship, you would need to pay them a salary or have some kind of energy mechanic that you would have to replenish and adjust it accordingly for each increasing ship size, maybe even have to pay to contract each sailor to begin with. With some testing you can definitely get it to where it would simply just not be worth it to shoot down every fishing boat or frigate you see on a Galleon because you would just be losing money thanks to the amount of npcs it would take just to have the ship running efficiently and that's on top of just getting the Galleon itself probably costing a lot of money since Steven said building the ships would be no easy task.

I think this would make it so Galleons have to be smarter about their targets and ambush someone who just finished hunting at a sea monster hunting ground for example or some kind of target that can guarantee high rewards. Besides Galleons are the easiest ships to spot from far away and will probably be the slowest so it shouldn't be too hard to keep a safe distance.