Ganking In The Red

[MrSparkle]

Anyone else seeing the OP as one of the reasons this game can't retain players?

Contrary to the game, real life didn't have captains with swords and equipment that were magically better than everything else, didn't have captain "levels", and didn't have crazy avcom AOE moves and ship cooldown abilities. You just can't draw real life parallels.

If you shouldn't be in the red if you don't want to get ganked, how do you get to ports like Tortuga that are always in the red? Even during cease fires red zones are purposely set up.

The game is fundamentally flawed with the way it handles PvP, and pure PvP MMOs tend to fail. Look at Shadowbane. The MMOs that do great are games where PvP is an option, like a battleground. The MMO with the best PvP in history - DAOC - had PvP that was entirely optional. You never had to step foot in a frontier or a battleground if you didn't want. The MMO where PvP was built in to the game as unavoidable - Shadowbane - failed.

Poorly designed PvP is only part of this game's problem though.