Naval PvP

Ships moving into an open sea naval PvP zone (open waters/deep ocean areas) will automatically flag players as Combatants (purple). Corrupted (red) players will remain red while in the open sea.

Another important change that has occurred is the open seas is now an automatic flagged location. So when you move off of land we have a flagging system that protects and the open seas are international waters where you need to be careful; and there is a lot of opportunity at Sea; and because there's a lot of opportunity that's unique to that content- that's unique to that sea: that's treasure finding; that's NPCs; that's a lot of different stuff there needs to be risk associated with opportunity. – Steven Sharif

• Players entering an open seas area will be notified by the UI ahead of time.
• Death penalties for corrupt players apply to every zone in the game, including naval PvP zones.
• Non-corrupt players will suffer reduced death penalties in naval PvP zones.

If you are not corrupt and you enter the open seas you will be taking a mitigated form of the death penalties, which means you will have a debuff applied upon death and in addition you will still suffer the gear degradation or gear decay upon death as well. But you will essentially be either significantly reduced in the experience debt accrued through death in the open seas if you're not corrupt, or there won't be experience debt accrued in the open sees if you are not corrupt. – Steven Sharif

• Open sea zones have better resources in more abundance to compensate for the added level of risk.

We have a very intuitive UI that as you approach the border between open sea and coastal area you are notified of that. You are warned ahead of time. There's a countdown when approaching. We interpolate the distance travel and speed you're moving and you get to see "I'm entering open waters"; and when you do you have this big trophy call out on screen that says "You have entered the open sea. Territory fraught." – Steven Sharif

Operators of a ship's weapons platform can initiate naval PvP against another ship in the following cases.

• The result of events (such as guild wars or node wars) between the parties.
• As the result of open-world PvP, utilizing the flagging and corruption system.

Naval combat

Alpha-2 Negalith naval raid boss.

This is one of the Alpha-2 raid bosses that are going to be in the ocean. That'll be interesting when you come across that, what might happen. Good luck. We should have added a scale there because yeah, it's a big boy. The number of ships needed for that one's going to be a lot. – Steven Sharif

Naval combat involves different types of Ships with varying capabilities, armaments and roles to play out on the high seas. There will be a balance and counterbalance between ships from PvP and PvE perspectives.

• Naval PvP is between ships.
• Naval PvE includes open sea raids and sea-based bosses.
• Certain ship classes and components may support ramming of other vessels or raid bosses.
• Ship weapons can damage both players and structures.
  • Damage done by ship weapons such as potion launchers will generate threat.
  • Characters can also use ranged skills during naval combat. Taunts and other threat generation skills can be utilised for tanking at sea.
• Coastal points of interest, such as harbors, offer objective-based naval gameplay during node sieges.
• There is a castle located on an island that is only able to be affected by naval combat.

Battles at sea will be epic. They will have some supreme rewards and/or losses if the battle succeeds or fails. – Steven Sharif

• Naval combat allows ships to be hijacked, destroyed and looted, but it doesn't allow the attackers to permanently keep the ships.

Q: Will there be a way to produce enough experience for a node for those who want to spend the majority of their time on the open seas?

A: The open seas have have a good amount of content; and that content when completed will give its contribution to a nearby node; and that is something that people who live on the sea, or desire to live on the sea, will be able to um contribute in a way. – Steven Sharif

Ship destructibility

Ship destruction at sea will leave its crew stranded, since ships (excluding Naval caravans) may only be summoned from a port or harbor.

• There is no "recall" (fast-travel) option to return to shore, however death by drowning will respawn the player on shore but will incur experience debt (and other death penalties).

We don't have a recall... There is consequence for you losing the means of your mobility and if you lost the means of that mobility then those consequences are it's going to take you longer to get to where you need to go, or you're going to have to suffer some experience debt. – Steven Sharif

• If a ship's navigator is killed or otherwise removed from the ship then any player will be able to navigate the ship for a period of 15 to 20 minutes before the ship despawns and becomes a wreckage.

• Dynamic destructibility of ships is under consideration.

I mean traditionally if we did not use dynamic destruction, that what we would use is decals to simulate damage on the ship based on an overall hit point value. At certain hit point values we would swap out the mesh to show a more destructive state potentially; and that and at that point for a user in regards to immersion both are very similar from the immersion factor right? – Steven Sharif

• Trade ships must be destroyed in order to capture the loot from its wreckage.

See also

• Naval
• Combat
• PvP