The game's description begins: "Naval Action is a hardcore, realistic... combat sandbox". Sadly with the most recent update this is no longer the case. Combat has been made 'arcade' in an attempt to boost the player numbers of a niche game, with completely arbitrary stat limits on guns (they used to have approximately historical ranges and penetration), damage limitations (cannonballs can no longer damage a ship's masts) and game-y status affects (shooting a ship's sails can now give it a temporary slow down debuff), in addition a lot of other changes.

The actual core problems the game had have not been addressed by this update, for example the time sink factor that turned a lot of players off. The open world mechanics were never really very good and are constantly changed resulting in regular soft-wipes of player's items, outposts etc. It looks like the recent patch has attempted to change the dominance of large clans over the crafting market by re-balancing the ability of crafting high-tier ships to individual players, but the crafting mechanics have been changed so many times already I haven't been able to keep up with them and I so I can't properly comment on what affect this will have. In any case, the patch notes say this is an in-progress feature and will be wiped "1-2 times" before it's finalised.

Despite being a full release the game is still treated as if it is early access - The game you can buy today has only a passing resemblance to the one from 3 years ago, and there's no signs that it will stop being fiddled with. This wouldn't be much of a problem if all the changes were good, but it's always a coin toss with each patch whether things are improved or made worse, and then it's all changed again the patch after anyway.

Unfortunately I wouldn't recommend buying this game anymore, the combat was the only good thing left and it's been thrown out the window with this patch.


EDIT: After a few days of the fallout from the patch I thought I'd add a few more thoughts.

Firstly, I've seen some people saying the recent negative reviews are from hardcore players who are salty that the game isn't catered to them anymore. I can't speak for other reviews but I'd like to mention that I was always a casual player since the beta. I spent a lot of my time solo or with a few friends doing a little trading or some PvE missions and my PvP experience was mostly trying to escape gankers, so this patch was theoretically targeted at players like me.

As casual as I was, the depth of the combat system was what kept me hooked to the game. It was not difficult to understand, especially for anyone with even a passing interest in age of sail combat. The interaction between different cannon types and a target ship's wood, angle etc had some complexity to it but it all made sense, which gave battles a fun tactical aspect to them that has been stripped away by the patch. I don't want to play the game in its current state but here are some details of the simplification that I've been able to glean from discussions:

- The thickness of a ship's hull now has little effect. Before, thick hull could resist smaller cannon fire, but this has gone and so battles are now a simple DPS vs HP fight.
- Similarly, a cannonballs hitting a ship at an angle could bounce off. This has been completely removed as far as I can tell, which is a shame as clever positioning was one of the ways smaller ship could try and fight a more powerful opponent.
- Cannon penetration is no longer affected by range, and its now a flat value across its entire range. Long guns actually gained penetration after a range threshold (somehow), but this was reverted.
- Sails and masts can now only be damaged with chainshot, which actually makes less sense to me as a cannonball hitting a piece of wood will damage it regardless of whether it's a mast or the hull.

I loved the old combat and I was able to endure the shaky open-world mechanics because of it. I have no interest in the new mechanics and I'm genuinely very sad to see the direction the game is going in.

For what it's worth, it seems the new crafting mechanics do actually give solo players more crafting power and they shouldn't have to rely on large clans anymore, but it's locked behind a long grind and as I said before, it's due to be wiped a couple of times still. Also everyone's crafting progress was wiped with the patch so I'm not sure how high-tier items are going to be crafted for some time, which will surely have a negative impact on the economy which is primarily player-driven.

I cannot see myself playing this game anymore after these unnecessary and drastic changes. The game is no longer what it advertises itself to be, and to have a full-release game wipe player progress and overhaul the gameplay as if it's still a beta is just not worth the cost of purchase or the time spent playing.