I don't know. Did I mention I'm not an economic player? :-) I sent it off to DesignCo to find out what they're thinking.

I agree and disagree. The PvP is an economic warfare game. We can't let people move goods through a PvP zone without danger. However, the current system is bad in that a port can be in PvP indefinitely (for all intents and purpose). We have a separate solution for that which is going into 1.3. And later on we'll add onto it to create a new kind of port battle.

Edit: To be clear, the part where I agree is that in the current system, it can be practically impossible for freetraders or PvE players with missions at a particular port to get into that port without the threat of PvP. The design intent was for PvP to arise, happen, and go away, and constantly be moving around the world according to the intent of the players. But we didn't put in a mechanic as to why it would move, so they hit the same ports and hold them indefinitely open. Which is bad, and being fixed.

Gang,

There are many reasons why a thread gets locked or such. Yes, some folks can have a debate, even a heated one, without the thread being filled up with bad stuff.

Please refer to the biggest reason posts get locked down in this forum:

-No Flaming
While debate and discussion are encouraged, we will not tolerate rude or insulting posts, personal attacks or inflammatory posts of any kind.

This means that the following are not appropriate:

1. Name calling.
2. Accusing people of exploiting/griefing. File a ticket if you see it.

That pretty much sums it up. If you wish to discuss the moderation process or the forum rules, you should submit a ticket and it will be sent to the appropriate place.

Posting an inflammatory response to a thread locking is the fastest way to get another one locked, especially when it ends up full of flaming bits again.

Since this couldn't stay friendly, we'll just close it.

I'd like to remind everyone...argue and debate all you wish. But please, stop with the mudslinging against each other.

We've never actually suggested stopping ships from sailing anywhere on the open sea.

I'm interested in taking this idea farther than just SOLs and the rest. I think it's an interesting way to create different PvP areas depending on the port to encourage different ranges of ships.

As for your idea, there's a) the issue of groups and b) the issue of player communication to decide if they can or can not engage that specific target. I'd rather do it with clearer lines.

I quoted your whole post because it's very illuminating. Yes, people have been asking for shallows for quite some time, and we tried to implement them. The problem was that we fell into the trap of trying to implement them in a very natural mechanism (i.e., it's part of a fight, and you have to watch the water for shallows, and small ships could lure big ships into the shallows and ground them, etc.) The implementation to do that turns out to be nightmarish, so when people said "Boy, we'd like shallows" our response was "Yeah, us too. But it's incredibly hard to do." But it was only true for that kind of implementation.

The "light through the heavens" that i think i mentioned was when we thought of it in the way you described above - do it completely as a game system, not as a simulation aspect. That took the idea from being amazingly hard to do into relatively simple. In fact, not only is it simpler, but it's less work (even had we figured out the other way, we'd have had to design ship rooms for it) and it has better gameplay implications for the player.

What's embarrassing about this is that we should have realized this earlier, but we simply hadn't gone back and questioned our basic ideas for shallows.

What we're working on now is how to deal with overlapping PvP rings, which is an interesting question, but I think ultimately solveable.

Read Me: Important Known Issue!
Copying your character from a live server to Testbed will delist all your auction house listings from the live server. While you will not lose those delisted items, they will be removed from the auction house and you will be able to relist those items again. We are working now to remedy this issue, but we will not delay further character copies to await that fix. We appreciate your patience and will keep you updated on our progress as we know more.

Not right now. We're working on the dev logs for 1.3, as well as the testing of 1.3, so we haven't had a chance to go over shallows working in non-port battles yet. We have an idea, but it screams unintended consequences, so we're going to work those out before we present to you. However, no, you're on the wrong track from above.

I would think most players would have a fairly easy time sinking me. I am merely an animator.

Yeah, as if I have any idea what you are talking about.