Level 21 and a look at the future of PvP

It took slightly longer than I expected but I have finally reached level 21 on Rackham as a Pirate Captain. The beginning was rough because I wasn’t too thrilled about doing the quests in the first three ports for the 20th time. I decided to grind away on much higher level missions and attack groups of three ships on the open sea. When I was bored of sinking ships over and over I went in to port to pick and choose which missions I wanted to mix things up with. I learned a valuable lesson from this form of leveling. Hunting ships on the open sea gives better loot but doing quests gives more doubloons (a lot more).

This lack of doubloons can be a real problem on the open sea. Ammo costs are already high from players gouging (although I admit it’s gotten slightly better over the past 2 days) and will only get worse on the 22nd. Players have started up a few discussion threads on the official forums questioning what is to be done at higher levels when the quests run out. Where will the money come from when we burn through thousands of shot per day? For now I’m relying heavily on my raw materials selling at auction to bridge the gap in doubloons for me. So far so good.

Now for a big tip that you’ve probably already heard a dozen times but I must emphasize how important this is: Get in a group and hunt ships 10+ levels above you. The experience is amazing! I went from level 16 yesterday to level 21 in no time at all. Levels 16-28 can easily be done in a group of 4 blockading New Orleans and sinking the French and Pirate convoys. The ships there are level 20-30 and regularly spawn in groups of 3. Make sure to scavenge them (if you’re a pirate, if not get pennants) all and you’ll come out with a few deeds or pennants to turn in for goodies.

I’m level 21. What now? I want to address a topic that came up recently. You may have hit 21 or still be far from it and already be bored and lacking direction. If you haven’t already please check out that post for advice on how you can enhance your gameplay experience. Right now the game isn’t really the game. We’re stuck in limbo waiting for the 22nd when the real features of the game are actually turned on. A horrible mistake by FLS to do this regardless of any reasoning they had to delay it. In that post I talked about briefly what you can do to enhance the experience we’re currently stuck with. Now I want to talk about what we can look forward to at release.

When port contention is enabled the game drastically changes. Right now players can sail freely anywhere in the ocean that they please and there’s nothing but perhaps a few aggressive NPCs to bother them. However, give it a few hours on the 22nd and you’ll start to see little red circles appearing in each region of the map. These are areas of Pirate contention. In these red areas Pirates and Privateers are able to attack anyone who enters them freely in order to build up more contention to begin the “open to anyone” bigger red circle. When this happens it will be much more difficult to transfer economy goods, travel, and to pvp.

PvP changes immensely! Right now gank groups are running around looking for anyone pvp flagged. When port contention is in players will be working with their nations on a plan of attack (or in case of the French, Defense, heh) that will likely impact how the pvp on your servers plays out. On my server the Spanish are incredibly powerful and have already stated up front that they plan to attack the Pirates. The second strongest nation on our server is the British. The Spanish know this yet still feel inclined to attack the Pirates. This will cause the Pirates to defend or fall back to the Bahamas and parts of the Antilles while the British ignore the Spanish and attack the French. The French, sad but true, always defend Florida and the upper gulf of Mexico and never really aspire to anything greater. It’s not their fault really, they can’t help it.

What would change things? Well, if the Spanish were smart they would hit the British and leave the French to be dealt with by the Pirates. The Spanish, in all their strength, risk fighting a war on two fronts if the Brits and ‘rats (pirates) suddenly decide enough is enough. Here’s where societies (guilds) come in to play. The larger guilds are the leaders of the nations. The players who are unguilded or who aren’t working with larger numbers will never accomplish anything on their own. It will take a few large guilds or an unprecedented large organized mob deciding to transfer the balance of power in a region to make a difference. Suddenly the importance of team work on a nation wide level means something and the focus on the individual is no longer relevant.

Can you see the difference in gameplay already? None of the PvP I just talked about is present in the game right now. No one is feeling that looming threat that their nation could be crushed for good and they could be forced to live out the rest of their days stuck in their starting ports. Right now there’s never the threat that your economy setup will run the risk of becoming obsolete because you can’t move goods. There’s no risk right now so there is no reward. I say bring on the risk already!

From my Captain’s Blog on the PotBS Vault.