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Wind and Sailing

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Quite sure not many people are sailing and truly understand how slow this game is. I logon and wind is in wrong direction. Great news 8 knots speed for me....twice as long to get to a tile. I like to play 4 hours in the evening but this mechanic just means I cannot do anything. The player count keeps dropping and now below 1k on NA pvp. Everyone moans about this being a pirate game but no one is on the seas..... I wonder why. Not one person wants to drive our boats because of how sucky it is due to slow frustrating mechanics. 

 

BUMP PLEASE do something before player count hits 0

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I just repeat what I said in my feedback thread (and few post above):

Right now it's totally wrong because wind just slowly rotates clockwise and rise and cut it strength. The problem with long half-atlas sailing - during your long journey it will cut it strength to calm. And will turn to a counter-wind. No mater from where you start. To were you sail. You will anyway experience calm and counter-wind.

m4jHv3D.jpg

Should we ANYWAY experience these? I'm not sure. Should we enjoy this kind of game experience? Well... from start it might be cool in some ways. Imagine you spent 9 hours playing:

- 20 minutes for voyage prep.

- 5 minutes for 1st treasure.

- 10 minutes for 2nd treasure.

- 15 minutes for 3rd treasure.

- 8 hours and 10 minutes of pure sailing. You just sitting and watching ocean and push few buttons occasionally (my bro, for example, watching twitch on 2nd display).

Now imagine you spent 800 hours playing. 90 of these for things in game (treasure digging, base/ship building etc), and 710 hours - just watching ocean? 710 hours of nothing!

If I would do the game - I personally would compress all map by up to 33%. Long journey must be here, and long water distances as well as some space for sea battles. But decrease one way traveling time from 3 hours to 2 hours (from 2 hours to 1 hour 20 minutes, from 1 hour to 40 minutes) - would be really great!

Wind must NOT rotate. I would love to see it blows just one way for some time. After that - it randomly changes it direction to some amount (small turns will happen more often then big ones. And limit big ones to some angle... for example 70 degrees). So you see it direction and plan your journey knowing - it will be somewhere this way.

Calms and hurricanes should lands occasionally. Most of time wind strength should be average.

And of course - something must be in the ocean. Right now we have just few samples of random weather, SqotDs, Whales and few traders ships. There must me way-way more.

- More living world. Some traffic, military squadrons, trading convoys, even NPC pirates! Maybe small quests in the sea (like escort or pick passengers from shipwreck to closest island).

- More nature - maybe some triangle formation birds. st. Elmos fires before storms. Water streams.

I would came with more ideas if there was not too late in my city (1.am atm).

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I think to make sailing better they need to change red sails back to stopping your ship. It would make handling sails a viable option once more and add a new bit of skill to ship combat (HOPEFULLY) stopping the full speed sails meta that's going on currently.

More random/interesting winds would be nice but I don't mind it currently. I'm excited for them to add things to do while we're sailing like the fishing nets, because I find that when going long distances you don't bother to stop for floatsam, SOTD, or floatsam. If they have more stuff you can do while the ship is moving like fishing, playing dice/cards, or other painting/crafting options would be nice. At least that way you can convince other players to stay with you on your ship while sailing as opposed to everyone bed teleporting away to do something else while you're stuck behind the wheel by yourself.

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The way the game is right now is

1. Some poor sap drives boat.

2. Everyone logons for the mission

3. Some poor sap returns boat

I just do not understand why we cannot find like 150-200% velocity sails or just remove the harsh winds / weight. I love killing ghost ships and doing trade runs but if they do not improve the wind/sailing speeds I am gone. I will not be that poor sap for much longer.

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I drive a galleon and do resource transports and I have absolutely no issue with the wind, wind speed, sailing speed or weight impacting my ship's movement speed.

Because I plan accordingly and know how my ship is supposed to work. It's called tacking and it's been a sailing mechanic for a couple thousand years. 

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More and more people i know stop playing, and to a large part due to the enormous downtimes this game has. A whole evening is easily devoured if you have to sail across more than 4-5 tiles with the current wind mechanic. Its a big turn off that you cant just log and get things done in a 3-4 hour session. Dont get me werong, i dont ask for zipping ovrer the whole map in 5 mins.. But waiting for ages for the wind to turn and rise... not fun. I spent large parts staring at the boring sea semi afk while watching tv.

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4 minutes ago, WInslow said:

It's called tacking and it's been a sailing mechanic for a couple thousand years. 

And thats so much fun, especially with zero wind.

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Just now, Grongash said:

And thats so much fun, especially with zero wind.

put on a movie, watch youtube. get a girlfriend

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3 minutes ago, WInslow said:

put on a movie, watch youtube. get a girlfriend

or just go play a game whre the main theme isnt ships and sailing… rofl what hte fuck do expect of a pirate game ??? a new teleporting tame? which ofc wouldnt surprise me if the devs introduced in to this awesome zoo simulator

Edited by Ducimus

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1 minute ago, WInslow said:

put on a movie, watch youtube. get a girlfriend

Yes great game. This game is meant to be the alternative for the tv/the wife.

Its simple this game at end game is about travelling multiple tiles and resource gathering. We did 16-20 map on Sunday. It took us 15 hours of sailing...yeah real fun. On Monday / Tuesday no one even bothers to logon now as they have now discovered what this games future is....sailing for ages.

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I plan out my trips, I guess we just see two sides of the same coin. I find the sailing to be calming, then suddenly very intense (storms + ships of the damned) then back to quiet calm time.

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I dislike sailing in this game.  not that the current mechanic is bad, it just takes FOREVER to go somewhere.  It needs to be speed up somehow to make going from point A to B faster.  Increase wind speed, or decrease the weight penalty.  maybe no speed penalty as long as your under 50% total weight, then you start to receive a penalty. 

Also the sails need a balancing pass,   currently there is no reason to use anything other then speed sails.

For people (like myself) that have limited play time, the last thing I want to do is sail for an hour an half when I only have two hours to play.

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I was on my journey today and found myself enjoying to pass this.

dnILbkt.jpg

So maybe more of those asteroid belts riffs and rocks lines in open areas, which we will be forced to avoid - increase our sailing experience (in addition to all other stuff I mentioned above). For example - once per couple of grids?

Edited by George Catcher

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I honestly like the sailing in this game. I do a lot of trade runs.

BUT.

The afternoon wind slowdown is brutal.I don't mind alternating winds, but when that hits, boom, 30 minutes or more to cross a tile. And it lasts for an entire zone. They need to look at this and make it not quite so slow. I can swim faster than the ship... It is absolutely mind numbing.

 

What they should do is make jet streams across the map, like how it is in real life. I don't think it needs to be overcomplicated with tons of vortexes, but generally, the wind should go the same direction with different jet streams depending on the hemisphere, poles, etc. Then the weather effects can temporarily change the wind direction, like it does now.

@Jatheish, make it so. :)

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5 hours ago, Master_Pain said:

What they should do is make jet streams across the map, like how it is in real life. I don't think it needs to be overcomplicated with tons of vortexes, but generally, the wind should go the same direction with different jet streams depending on the hemisphere, poles, etc. Then the weather effects can temporarily change the wind direction, like it does now.

Yep, that would do the trick, and add even more real-worldisms for strategic planners to think about.

Just make the 4-line prevailing winds eastbound, 7 line westbound, 9 line eastbound, and 12 line westbound. Also make it much less likely that winds in these longitudes go calm, but the stormwind frequency is increased to compensate.

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On 5/15/2019 at 6:12 PM, gnihar said:

its very boring

I quite like the sailing.  I just wish it was more realistic..  What is getting to me is the sailing...the water, etc., is the most realistic I have seen in a game, but then that gets disrupted by...game...everything having to be a minigame.  So everything just goes in this endless cycle or wind rotation, speed changes, fog, rain, cyclones storms, and then clear weather...then add in the SotD.  Sometimes you want to just be able to sail, and enjoy the view...wish the islands looked more pleasing from a distance.

But, I also get that you want those SotD to be there, when you want to farm them.

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Tbh I think the weather mechanics are way too predictable,we get a heatwave straight after it rains,and if no rain then every 5-10 minutes,and I haven't found any way to cool down not even water anymore.And the problem with sailing taking so long is how fast my vits go down,If they disabled vit mechanics while you were at sea it would make the long journeys easier to cope with for me.  

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On 5/15/2019 at 6:42 PM, Grongash said:

More and more people i know stop playing, and to a large part due to the enormous downtimes this game has. A whole evening is easily devoured if you have to sail across more than 4-5 tiles with the current wind mechanic. Its a big turn off that you cant just log and get things done in a 3-4 hour session. Dont get me werong, i dont ask for zipping ovrer the whole map in 5 mins.. But waiting for ages for the wind to turn and rise... not fun. I spent large parts staring at the boring sea semi afk while watching tv.

Honestly, they'll probably add magic wind with the magic tier. Have wind 100% behind you at all times for X minutes feats.

 

What they need to do is add carrier pigeons so people can trade each other maps from across the world.

Edited by gadefence

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4 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

I quite like the sailing.  I just wish it was more realistic..  What is getting to me is the sailing...the water, etc., is the most realistic I have seen in a game, but then that gets disrupted by...game...everything having to be a minigame.  So everything just goes in this endless cycle or wind rotation, speed changes, fog, rain, cyclones storms, and then clear weather...then add in the SotD.  Sometimes you want to just be able to sail, and enjoy the view...wish the islands looked more pleasing from a distance.

But, I also get that you want those SotD to be there, when you want to farm them.

No, I just find the sailing to be a huge time sink. That is why I rarely do it. Everything in this game takes 5 hours to do lol.. and once you have seen a few islands, you have seen them all. At least in other sims, like Elite, you have a hyperspace 😉

Edited by gnihar
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image.png.52435b902ab2c2719a7d77e59f6c6b59.png

 

Sailed nicely to the powerstone island. Server goes down and boom look at that beautiful arrow upon return. 8 knots speed to sail home with.....honestly I just do no get why this is not being addressed. My sail back 1 grid is now 40mins watching dead sea. Why is this a thing?!?!?! 

image.png

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55 minutes ago, advengerkos said:

image.png.52435b902ab2c2719a7d77e59f6c6b59.png

 

Sailed nicely to the powerstone island. Server goes down and boom look at that beautiful arrow upon return. 8 knots speed to sail home with.....honestly I just do no get why this is not being addressed. My sail back 1 grid is now 40mins watching dead sea. Why is this a thing?!?!?! 

image.png

That sucks if the server switched things up on you. If that happened to me, and I didn't have any resources to gather somewhere else or nearby maps to fiddle with, I'd just fast travel back to my base and do some crafting or maintenance for an hour to let the wind change to a faster or a better direction. The one constant is that it always changes.

Just curious, did you change ships for the return voyage, or was that for the point of illustration? Also the turn of wind looks like about 2 hours worth of clockwise movement, did you spend that long at the powerstone island? If so, the wind direction actually seems about right for a return voyage.

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I just put two pics of the tiny wind line. I just want the devs to realise they have a lot of people who would enjoy sailing if there was not such a frustrating mechanic in the game. I literally spent 32 mins watching dead sea as I returned back to base. 

This game should be all about getting on the sea. People should be visiting islands 3-4 grids away constantly. Instead no one wants to sail because they do not want to get lumbered with the boat. 

There is also another thread on reddit about reversing speed. Another example of pure annoyance. You get back to base and have to spend 5-7mins just slowly reversing...completely annoying time sink.

Lets make sailing more enjoyable! There is no need for new content just revisit what you have and improve the experience.

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