Originally posted by davemon:

The golden age of sail is no longer in this game. It was back in 2016 to 2018. There was a stirring every day and excitement all the time. Huge time investments by many players.
Large groups of people would plan port attacks together over days, some would intercept enemies like dutiful soldiers, and defend their nation's progress vehemently and with pride. The map shifts were exciting and everyone would get caught up in which nation was pushing forward where. There were well known clans with power that had large sway in the game, a good trading market with some people getting richer than sheikhs, shipbuilding experts that many would seek out, map areas of hot activity, community events that were fun and well attended, and yes we even had fishing. I myself would get up earlier just to play a little extra time before RL kicked in. People were using, tracking and sharing spreadsheets, and there were several running websites. In short, a very exciting time for this game.

Those days are long gone. If you had the game back then you should've played then. The last line of your post above is probably the best you can do now, I'm sorry to say.

Originally posted by FunkySchnitzel:

So I bought this game like a million years ago, when it first came out. I never played it seriously, and have just come back after a very long hiatus.

The new player experience in this game is truly awful. You get a crappy little boat with no guns, and have to run boring trade missions over and over to grind out enough experience to get a vaguely better boat. I can't even use the 2 DLC boats that I apparently own, because I need to be way higher rank, and it'll probably take me 30 hours of grinding just to get there.

Now, it's worth pointing out that I'm a dude who loves the hauling/trading experience in most games, and even I can't get on board with the early game hauling contracts. Sailing on the world map is boring, simple, and risk free. It's not interesting. Pointing your boat at a compass bearing and going for a piss while you wait isn't gameplay. There are no NPC pirates or storms or anything to spice up your journey, so you just watch a tiny boat blast along at 30 knots for 5-10 minutes, pull a handbrake turn into port, and drop off the mission for a tiny amount of XP.

I get that this is probably a tactic to make people spend money to progress faster, but you're putting this in at the wrong part of the game. The first few hours should be fun and engaging to convince a new player that they like the game. Then after a couple of ship upgrades they should start hitting that grind wall to encourage spending.

What you've built here is a guaranteed way to turn people away at the door before they spend a single penny.

I guess I'll go back to one of the old Sea Dogs games.