Naval Action

what a clusterfu*k of a game ...some 2300+ hrs in this what was already a barely tolerable game run by devs that are nothing but narcissist light weight no bodies who know nothing about game development, marketing and listening to their most important assets their player base... if anybody who thought this new team was going to be the saviour of what could have been a great game then they are just kidding themselves...if you dig deep and look hard enough behind this facade you will find the same names that were with the previous development group...only thing that has changed here is the name they run under like the cockroaches they are... the DLC's are way over priced for what u get and is a good example of a money grab for some rusky bit*h oligarch...score for this game minus 10

This game is spiraling into destruction.

I first started playing in January 2020, and for a time, happily enjoyed myself, working my way up to some merchant ships and sailing a small flotilla across the Caribbean, building outposts as I went, and establishing a network. I joined a clan, ran supplies for them, and bought some bigger warships.

As time went on, the changes became more and more unfriendly to players. I took a few breaks, some longer than others, but would return. Finally, a couple years back, the patches made it nearly impossible to capture larger warships, such as first and second rates. This sounded the first of the death knells for the game, from my end.

Then the announcement of new management for the game came. Some small measure of hope crept back. Warning posts promised that it would be a new name, same game, same poor decisions, but I still allowed the hope to remain. That hope started fading fast when reports from the beta arrived. After many delays (in keeping with the way these devs do things), the big patch and final (final for real this time, they promise guys!) wipe arrived. And the changes were even worse than expected.

I spent most of a day playing, running cargo, ramming enemy vessels to board them, and selling whatever I gained to afford gunpowder and shot. Finally, having crew, cannons, shot, and powder, I set forth in my Trincomalee to capture a Les Gros Ventre merchantman.

I ran out of shot. Very nearly ran out of powder, too. Fortunately, I had done enough damage that it ended up sinking, but an entire days worth of play went into a single battle against a single merchantman. Not sustainable. 1/10, would not repeat.

And now the devs are making it so you can't board without guns. A classic example of "NO, YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT MY WAY!" At this point, the devs are playing Calvinball with the game, constantly changing the mechanics to try and force the players to play the way they want them to, with no regard for what the players actually want or enjoy. They are intentionally killing the game to sate their own egos.

Let this stand as a warning to you all. Do not play this game. Do not buy any DLC for it. Do not support it in any way until the developers are replaced or have proven they will listen to player feedback (like, at all).

What was even the point of wiping the Peace server? So that players don't have advantage over bots? Huh???

Let's recap the latest update:

• A wipe of a strictly PvE server where the economy was bad enough even when players and clans were active, now good luck finding something outside of the starting town.
  
  
• Millions of credits, thousands of doubloons and resources, hundreds of guns and upgrades, dozens of ships and buildings gone, reduced to atoms.
  
  
• Absolutely no compensation about anything mentioned above: the more you played, the harder you got fucked. I've never seen such anti-player move before, and I played World of Tanks and Warthunder...
  
  
• Now you need gunpowder in order to use your guns, yay more realism! But apparently Nassau was the only town capable of producing it in the entire Caribbean during the 18th century...?
  
  
[*]Usually updates bring either more stuff or more polish, but the devs being alternative decided to remove missions, useful mechanics (outpost teleporting), add more annoying, repeating messages with huge windows, and they even removed the polish nation!

I saw a major update after years of being fed up with this game's course, changes, etc.
So I was excited to pick up again because well... the new devs might have done a good job... right?

How wrong I was.
Officially done with you now, Naval Action. RIP.

My honest thoughts...

The latest update has seriously messed up the game mechanics. While the ideas behind the changes are great, the execution is a disaster. Here’s what’s wrong with the current state of PVP zones:

Mission Scarcity – Almost no missions are available, and the few that exist require hauling absurd amounts of weight.

Gunpowder Shortage – Finally got your first warship? Too bad, good luck finding gunpowder to actually use it.

Paywalled Basics – The game now feels like it’s pushing you to buy DLCs just to access fundamental features.

Outpost Trap – Unlocked your first outpost? Surprise! Your ship contract slots are 0/0, forcing you to pay $35 for a DLC (+5 slots) just to upgrade and use them, or grind for a while for a single slot upgrade.

No More Teleporting – Even with an outpost, fast travel is gone, making gameplay unnecessarily tedious.

DLC Ship Advantage – Every 24 hours, players can respawn a new DLC ship, putting new and struggling players at a huge disadvantage. Unless you’re exceptionally skilled (or join a clan), you’re practically forced to buy DLC ships to survive.

The developers had a solid vision, but the predatory monetization and poor balancing have ruined the experience for me. Wait until things improve if they ever do.

Im officially done with this game, and it frustrates me to say that. I've played this game when it first came to steam, and been playing it off and on over the years. But the game just kept getting worse and worse. The straw that broke the camels back for me, was this new server merger/wipe they did. I was looking forwards to the wipe actually, but unfortunately, they couldn't leave well enough alone when rolling out the changes. Im speaking from my resent Peace server experience, and found out they ended up gimping the new player experience, restricting everything to you, except a few select things you can do. There are probably things I've missed, but frankly im done giving this game chances. This game is a fully released game, that still wipes peoples progression after a period of time, because the games systems and economy are terrible. I was never against the wipes, but at least before, we had a means of getting back on our feet, unlike now.

If you're seeing this review, I highly recommend steering clear of this game. Its not worth the time, nor effort, because it just seems the devs stopped caring a long time ago, and that they don't care about what happens with this game going forwards. This used to be a great game, but now its just trash to me, and I wish it wasn't so.

New updates make it almost impossible to enjoy... Don't believe me? Go look at the Discord. My honest review would be to long so let me summarize. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME. Nothing but a horrible time wasting graveyard of false hope.

Cannot recommend.

Before the update:
Used to be a hop-on-pew-ships-hop-off cheap fun.

After the update:
Gunpowder and ammo required, for realism, ok, I'll get on board with that.
Gunpowder can only, and I mean ONLY, be bought in 1 place. Nassau, the shallow water starting port. For realism too I'm guessing? lol.

This means that if you're sailing a deep water 5th rate or better and you run short of Gunpowder, you MUST get back to a shallow water ship, sail to Nassau, buy more powder, sail BACK to your port, and transfer the powder to your main. Because Realism.

For other "Realism" design choices, shallow water ports have cargo missions to earn some basic money, cool.
Deep water ports rarely have any missions for cargo. Because it's realistic that people in the Caribbean suddenly stop goods transport.

Save your money, skip the game.

After buying 500 GBP worth of DLCs, I still can not play the game normally. All because I apparently need to buy their newest DLC ship to be able to even afford firing my gun. The dev just want you keep paying for the same game loop.

The game was great back in 2016, the game had a solid playerbase even within PVE server then after multiple wipes, pay to win premium ships that got the devs greedy to the point that now the game is unplayable even if you pay premium ships.
I had faith in the latest update to see it back to it's former glory after the multiple disapointments of updates they made. Guess what, it's an even bigger disapointment.

After years of getting post poned of a supposed major update and what felt like a shadow developer swap, everything has remained the same. Perhaps worse, Wipes on all servers, which i would not have minded in general. Missing Missions on anything beyond the starter area, forgetting the fact you start with nothing so have fun to ball it out on endless deliveries that pay way better than the supposed fixed trading, which by the way is worth it if you have to walk the dog in the mean time. But hey, lets post pone promised updates and fuck the war server for years and just release a new dlc just seconds after the ungodly unpolished main update. I paid for this game a long time ago, i paid for DLCs that have been fundamentally changed just now, see Rotterdamm (Reduced Cargo Space from 12k to 3,7k for a Trader, which weirdly enough i bought it for smh), having removed its sole selling point. Ty for that. My friends with beyond thousands of hours suffered even more. It´s a beautiful game combat wise, or in general realism, and i wish i could still stand behind it. But at one point, despite how much i want the game to revive, devs need a reality check. With all of it said, to any F2P People, its a hella good game your looking for in that genre, enjoy it , but fuck me support those devs once with a penny and you suffer the same fate. Good game, shit devs, boycott dlcs, bring em down. It could be so more but we older players fucked up with tolerating and funding it too much

Can we just remove this game from Steam at this point? The game is unplayable now as a new player unless you have DLC to even have a small head start, and the devs ban anyone who complains in Discord.
This is a scam at this point and RIP to the people who bought DLC, myself included... I thought the painting thing was cool and it was on sale.

What an awesome game:
-quick start PvP battles for ADHS players from the main menu
-great and epic sea battles with almost no player limit
-mission rewards for all participating players and not only for ninja looters
-big active clans
-affordable ships of every quality thanks to the durability system
-functional easy trading
-outposts that produce trade goods for you
-thousands of players on every server (Asia, NA, SA, EU, ... you name it and the same for PvE)
-crafting is painful though - but very rewarding
-UI is a placeholder but works

Then they wiped during beta and suddenly all the servers were empty. After that they somehow made it to a release version, ditched everything good that remained and went full retard mode.

10/10 would play the alpha and beta again.

if you want a job after a long 8 hour day then maybe this is for you its a total grind fest to begin with now the devs want you to invest more time more effort to do dog dick in the game wish i could get my money back

Not too many games come about where one can make up many many different ways to play it. From playing it I've also learned so much about ships and their capabilities and their past stories, many of which inspire us prior to a port battle. This game, you should have some friends or be all you can be is best i can put it. hope this helps. sea ya.

Graphics are nice but that's about it really, it gets boring after a while. Pvp sucks unless you join a clan

I can't comprehend why they wiped the War server. What a joke. Hundreds of hours to waste.

That game is basically a scam, do not waste a dime in it.

I have never written a review for this game, but I would like to as I cross a rubicon of hours that no other game has sucked me in to do so.

If you are looking for the best attempt at a recreation simulator of naval combat with some iconic age of sail ships of the past, then look no further, the physics engine and level of thought that has gone into making Naval Action what it is today is a testament to their small team and utter investment in the end result, the experience is almost entirely player driven and it is seldom seen in this day and age where a game forces you to come together as either small communities or solo groups.

The game doesn't spoonfeed you, and you will have to work to progress, but believe me, you'll meet some fellow Age-of-Sail lovers along the way, and probably learn a thing or two about becoming a sea captain.

Fly under the British, French, Spanish flags or perhaps, take up the black skull and crossbones of the pirate nation, either way, you'll find yourself embroiled in a persistant war of domination and control of the ports in the 'New World'

See you on the seven seas Captains!

Very complicated

Naval Action recently got new Devs. They are reverting the game back to the good old days. Play the BETA version! This will bring back a lot of old players! Cant wait to see what they'll do.

This game has been plagued by horrible development choices for years however at its core it can still be fun. The reason this game will always remain dead is the player base . You cant mix players playing for a decade who have not done anything new in years all they end up doing is making the game miserable for new and inexperienced players. Tried picking up the game again only to be attacked by 3 rank 1 ships with my rank 5. This is one game I will never touch again good riddance.

It's a good thing! :-)

Dev PoV

-Make game called Naval Action
-Make PvP server
-Make players lose money when PvPing
-Make going AFK while trading the most profitable way to play
-Make not PvPing the only way to PvP on a PvP server

Profit????

I mean, realistically it is a really fun game. It has a little bit of a learning curve when you first start playin but not too terrible. It has a decent realism feel especially with the naval battles. And honestly for a free game it’s not bad at all.

It's a Good niche game

Liking the new changes so far. Keep up the good work.

I've followed this game since the very beginning, having been looking for something to replace an old age of sail MMO I played quite a lot.

As soon as I could pre order/gain alpha beta access, I was in. It was a huge step up from the previous games in the genre, physics were great and graphics were beautiful. The base game was rather polished, and there honestly wasn't much for game breaking bugs that I ever witnessed.

PvP is where I usually hung around, and after 500 some hours I was enjoying my top of the line connie dubbed The Crimson Jewel. There wasn't much that could beat me. Small ships had to be perfect on their timing, and larger ships stood no chance in 1v1. 2v1 I still could usually kite them down and finish the fight. It is a game that really does reward you for honing your skills and purpose building your ships and you feel like a badass pirate captain.

Then, they wiped the server. Said they needed to clear the board because too many people became rich due to 'bugs'. Okay, fine. So we all restarted. And made our money the exact same way we did previously. The issue is the levelling system that reduces your crew. I believe they had gifted the older players with some starting cash and/or their original level, but I can't quite remember. Long story short, I retried and kind've enjoyed the buildup again but honestly never made it back to where I was initially.

Then, I came back for a third time to find that I had been reset again. Okay, fuck that. I started just doing PvE because they kept resetting the PvP servers over the years. Once again, built myself up to about mid level enough to crew some shabby 5th class ship and lost interest.

Just now, I figured hey, got more time now might take another crack at it. Should be starting where I was before since I was on PvE.

And I'm met with the dreaded player creation screen. I've been playing since 2016 and I need to yet again restart. Absolutely no coins, ships, or levels. Nothing to show for 715 hrs on record.

It's a great game, the devs obviously have some horrible strategies in managing their playerbases. I think seasonal pvp was a decent idea, but resetting pve AGAIN? How does that make ANY sense?

End of the day, player counts are the telling factor. I wouldn't expect the servers to stay up too much longer anyways. And as a result, I won't be buying anything from the developers of Naval Action in the future. They ruined what was a very fun, informative, and beautifully crafted game with a passionate audience. The gritty nature of the carribean and seeing an unknown ship in the distance and the feeling of despair (or a juicy target) goes hand in hand with letting things progress naturally. But they couldn't keep their grubby fingers off of it.

I'm currently on a cycle of revisiting nostalgic games for myself, and unfortunately this one if not one I'm going to waste anymore time and money on.

This game hasn't just died; It's been murdered by its developers. It used to be an extremely fun and realistic 18th century naval warfare simulator. Now it's just a crafting and trading sim. When you loose a battle, you loose your ship and everything on it. Given how f-ing grindy this game is, that's just not fun. You work for hours and hours to get to the stage where you get access to ships of the line, to get to the stage of the game that you really came for, being the line battles, and then when you loose one single time you get to start all over again. Also; The battles are bonkers. I laid my ship of the line alongside an AI one and scored more hits than he did. I had 10 more guns per side. Heavier guns too. And yet he did more than twice the amount of damage to me compared to what i did to him. And so i lost my ship and have to start over again. I'm done with this game, and i'm not going to play it again.

Oh, and what a charming f you from the devs towards all the players who actually bought this game; To now make if free to play and hide the actual fun mechanics which we were promised in development behind DLC. Scumbags.

Awesome game! Once you get past the initial grind/learn the game, it is very fun.

Use to play the game in PVE, just played to have fun with friends against AI. They changed the game so once your ship died it was gone forever. Lost my ship after years of playing and never went back. The missions also changed in the game so they werent as fun, and more chances of death. In the end they took a game to just jump in and have fun with no risks to "hey you die you lose everything" dont have the time for that kind of game especially against AI

Shit game atm and Shit Devs :D dont waste ya time people
Admirality and ink have no respect for the playerbase

This used to be a good game some time back. But the developers did not do any justice to the potential it had. No new content or improvements were added as requested by the players. Once the player base hit rock bottom they just scooted. So I do not recommend this game to any one with current status.

The Dev is a fucking liar and don't give a fuck about the player base... Introducing Gunpowder and Ammo now makes your DLC a complete waste of money.

Imported DLC ships are perfect if you just want to jump into action quickly, ignoring hauling of resources, just buy guns, repairs and you are good to go. DLC will appear in your redeemable list after you dock to any port.

Complete utter bullshit now

Alright. Im gonna get lengthy with this one so strap in, ill try to split this into sub headings of importance for myself personally, and why some things are good and why others are bad.

Gameplay
Alright, i have around 80 hours in the game, i bought it before it was FTP. I think this is a fairly unloved game (atleast until now) and has been neglected by devs and creators. I think the gameplay is unique, easy to learn and doesn't require you to be a tryhard nerd at it (This is before the update which changes balance of battles and repairs, trading and building). It is easy to get into a game, fight a few cutters for your first 5k dobloons which will allow you to quickly buy a Cerb - aka the quick way to big ships. The wind accuracy, the fighting and boarding mechanics, group battles all require adjustments, but their core is perfect i think.
Visuals
This game is 2GB, anyone that dares saying its not beautiful needs to give their head a wobble. its stunning, seeing my 30 odd cannons fire from an ingermanland is phenomenal, i remember i used to zoom in on empire total war to see the same thing. Epic and im the one controling it.
Story?
There is none. Jump into a server (as pirate for example) accept your mission to hunt rank 7 ships, fight said ships, collect reward, rank up rinse and repeat with higher next levels. (There are more features, but im talking about the easy way)
PVP
Haven't had much experience, everyone ran away from me the moment i got off a navy brig (pink).
PVE
Epic. EPIC EPIC EPIC. More natural, i feel like i play a really good SP game when solo fighting 2 ships. No do overs, to try again, either win or sink.
trading
players are friendly, everyone likes to help and often offers cheaper ships. Its epic af.
groups
grouping system is broken (will be fixed in the next patch as far as i know) but when it works its fun, taking on bigger ships, or just ones you wanna capture and keep. Epic.
what to expect
Expect delays, little to no communication from devs dlc ships which heavily help at the start of the game, but countless hours adventuring through the open sees looking for specific ships for missions, or trying your very best to 1v1 a ship with higher BR than you just to collect more XP. Fucking love this game.

Impatiently waiting for more.

I know this game gets a lot of hate, i was one that would throw stones at the devs for not communicating with their player base, but i love this game, and with a little more tweaking and love from them itll be perfect.

It's not good

The game looks like it would be awesome but, new players will be relentlessly hunted and destroyed by much higher level people, and there is simply nothing that you can do about it. the developers have designed the game, in a way, that rewards people for being jerks. this ruins the enjoyment for new players. and therefor will just inevitable cause the game to die in time. and by the looks of it, it is well on its way to this fate.

Game Devs are morons

Game goes free to play.
New players cant join the regular servers just the seasonal one.
Hmmmm why does no one play on the regular server anymore.
Delete the main server.
Imagine spending 1k+ hours on this game just for it to get deleted.

Most autistic game devs in the history of gaming. The original devs should be banned from ever being able to develop and create video games again in this market. Way to destroy a game with so much possibility.

not easy to learn but super fun will take all day to do anything so dont think u will be on and off like other games

one of the best naval simulation games

Excited to see where BCC take the game. Already pointed things the community has been complaining about for years. No more wipes will be the first major step into giving this game life again. I miss the days of 1000s of ships roaming the seas. People not having all their hard work destroyed any longer will make a world of difference.

For those complaining about pay wall etc. Learn the game and you'll quickly realize once you are set up and on your feet, most certainly if you are with a good clan, you will have the ability to fuel your pvp/pve desires. The issue prior was the game has grind (which i love personally) and your loses matter mostly. With your work being reserved you can easily build up the ability to support yourself and absorb those blows EVEN without DLC ships. DLC ships save you time and nothing more.

Also note: Those DLC ships still need to be fitted, upgraded, booked, etc so it's not as simple as buying a ship and now you are OP. You still need to be successful at the rest of the game to paint that picture.

So BCC Thank you for giving this game a chance at life again. I for one will be looking forward to giving this game a solid go again. I've missed good age of sail combat.

EDIT: Yeah this game is a lost cause. Sad to see it go but it's time. Can't recommend after playing the new update on the test server. It's an absolute joke.

I bought this game when it was pay to play. Back then you could get some ships and help from the community. Then the devs did a reset of the servers and lost a good bunch of players.
Then they added one durability to the ships. It made PvP more of a risk.

Since the devs fucked over the playerbase they needed more money. So they added DLC ships. They didnt sell enough, so they made shipbuildning more annoying. Now i saw the DLC page, and half of the ships you could build is now DLC ships that you can get for free. Wont be suprised if they make all ships like that soon.

So unless you pay a ton of money for extra ships, or are unemployed and ready to spend a full time on this game dont bother.

I wouldnt recomend supporting developers who behave like this either.

It was very good, But it is crap now, Don,t Buy it
Thanks to the crapist devs ever.

It could be such a great game. Good job developers! :(

Great game lots of potential a gem in this genre it just needs cheaper dlcs,a easyer way for smaler groups or even single players that put 24/24h per day into the game to at least set up an atack on enemy ports,a tool to measure distances and pinpoint locations on the map in open world in case someone needs to call for reinforcments if atacked or iniciated atack on enemys in open world like for example triangulation from known ports with course and distance or latitude and longitude,an easyer way to switch between servers once in game instead of exiting the game just to switch servers or to check whats the population on each server,more nations maybe india or italy or something else,bigger map like worldwide map,fixing the godamn wind going in circles:) and thats all imo call me crazy but the game is great recomend 9/10

bought it back then for 30 bucks. Now it is for free...

Can't recommend the game in its current state. It's just too much of a grind and there isn't enough support for it to be worth it.

The actual ship combat is pretty fun in the beginning. It is a fun challenge to try and sink other ships. I have no idea if it is historically accurate but the wind actually really matters and you can spend a lot of time just trying to get in position. The ship models are also pretty cool. At times you do genuinely feel like an admiral.

But those times are fleeting. The rest of the game is a slow, confusing grind. And, once you reach a certain tier of ship, it becomes nearly impossible to advance. You cannot really board and take a ship that's bigger than a 4th rate without a ship of that size or a lot of experience in the game. I for one am not an experienced player, so the idea of capturing ships to advance in the game is just fanciful.

And if you decide that you want to just build the ships, that's impossible (practically speaking; we're talking hundreds of hours solo) just to get one of the bigger and cooler ships. Instead, you need to join a clan and get help. But the big clans are all very cliquey, and aside from that there just isn't even enough players to actually be able to accomplish anything. And even if you did, there's a dizzying amount of resources and systems that don't even make sense.

So, you're practically locked in at the smaller ships, unless you pay these outrageous DLC prices. Seriously; it's over $60 for a digital ship model!

It's really a shame. I played this game several years ago and remembered it being more fun. But now, it's a dead game.

waste of time. they deleting factions so u get fewer choices and usa is gone

is just as good as Russian roads... which is to say terrible.