Battle screen camping, log off camping - final proposal

[admin]

Hello everyone. 

There are no easy solutions to this problem without ruining some other things. All the problems come with the time compression and some of the game mechanics interfere with attempts for elegant solutions. 

Problems

1. People log off at sea (quality of life feature) and then log in to enter port battles or attack others
2. People sit in battle result screen to attack others or avoid gank
3. People wait outside to wait for someone to come out from the BR screen wasting time

The issue with 2 and 3 is caused by the following design. If you escaped you are still put into the same place in the open world totally disregarding the fact that you repositioned in battle. In reality problems 2 and 3 would never happen because if you escaped you escaped and got to port. In our game if you escaped you are still placed (punished) and placed to the same area giving attackers a second attempt to sink you. 

In addition to that if you want to continue fighting (even though you have escaped) you are forced to sit in the BR screen and attackers waiting outside are forced to wait for you playing the waiting game wasting hours of time for both. This had 2 additional problems: if you sailed with friends you will be split up from the group breaking the group and removing fun for all of you. If one of you sank and was in port another one would have to hide in the BR screen and still not have a chance to play. This breaks groups up and creates less pvp as a result.

We have thought long about the fixes and here are the potential solutions. We warn in advance that there are no easy solutions and some quality of life might suffer in rare cases. Please be constructive and open minded when thinking about it. Those are not very elegant solutions but all 3 above mentioned problems will be solved.

 

Proposals

Escape (BR screen camping and revenge gank escape)

If you escaped the battle you no longer will be placed in the same spot in the open world - if you escaped you escaped. No need to try to give someone a second chance to get you. To do so we will give the player the option to either exit to the open world or teleport him to the certain friendly port (for example nearest friendly port).  That's what would real life captain would do in case of certain danger - try to escape to the nearest friendly port. Thus the player will have lets say 5 mins to decide if he wants to exit to the OW, if he did not make this choice he will be escape to port. 

TLDR: BR screen will force you to the nearest friendly port if you have not chosen to enter OW within 5 mins.

I personally like this solution a lot as it solves a lot of problems and actually makes life easier for mission runners, pve players and small groups pvpers. Some might say that it will allow more fast travel options for people but maybe its not a bad thing as the main goal is to waste less time and pvp/pve more. 

Log off before battles/port battles

PB entry timer can be implemented. If you log off at sea, when you login you will receive a port battle entry lock blocking you form entering port battles for lets say 30 mins. This lock can be removed by entering any friendly/allied port. 

This solution is not elegant. Disconnects count as log off and if you sail to port battle and suddenly disconnect you will have to sail back to friendly port to remove the timer or wait for significant time. So players with not stable connections will suffer a lot and this will cause a lot of frustration.

 

Lets discuss this issues constructively and decide finally if it is really a problem. We must close this door this week and stop thinking about it. 

 

[Bart Smith]

This i tricky one - honestly. On one hand we got real life stuff and loosing ships because of that it seems bad on the other hand camping battle screen on purpose is nothing like cheating. Maybe try escape by spawn quite far from battle but not directly in port? Or give second option teleport to near  friendly/neutral port but lock players there for certain time (15 min?) Dunno...i dont like limits

[Pada]

Will everyone get the teleport option or just the defender side? I like your proposal. The time wasting has to end, in and outside of battle screen.

[Hethwill]

I never saw any issue with it, cast my vote as Ni but...

... if anything must be done, and without imposing any limits, by all means place the ship/ships in the port.

Logoff before PBs seems perfectly acceptable and truly reasonable with the 30 mins.

[Siegfried]

I like the first idea, 5 minutes and TP to nearest port. If I can escape, I escaped for good, not artificial second chances.

The second idea don't know, I don't play port battles and I have not an opinion for that.

 

But I don't understand the question and what option I must to vote. YES to change the post battle screen to TP nearest port and I don't know the port battles question.

Edited December 6, 2016 by Siegfried

[Corona Lisa]

17 minutes ago, admin said:

BR screen will force you to the nearest friendly port if you have not chosen to enter OW within 5 mins.

I like this a lot.

At the first look you could say this is helping gankers even more. But if you think about it, you realise that gankers will send out a scout out of battlescreen first anyways and if there are too many outside they just wait in battlescreen. So there is no chance to catch them anyways. With that change you at least have safety in that area after 5 mins.

I see no downside to it.

26 minutes ago, admin said:

Log off before battles/port battles

PB entry timer can be implemented. If you log off at sea, when you login you will receive a port battle entry lock blocking you form entering port battles for lets say 30 mins. This lock can be removed by entering any friendly/allied port. 

This solution is not elegant. Disconnects count as log off and if you sail to port battle and suddenly disconnect you will have to sail back to friendly port to remove the timer or wait for significant time. So players with not stable connections will suffer a lot and this will cause a lot of frustration.

Why not make ships teleport back to the nearest friendly port when you log out for longer then 10 mins? There is no frustration caused by DCs anymore and I dont think its abusable since it puts you into the nearest port.

[Cecil Selous]

Is it possible to give an additional option in BS that you can spawn 10 OW sailing min away in the direction of your choice (N,E,S,W with check if this would be on land or not)?

That way you won't be in danger but also can not resume in fighting immediately or BS ganking.

[Havelock]

26 minutes ago, admin said:

TLDR: BR screen will force you to the nearest friendly port if you have not chosen to enter OW within 5 mins.

 

Agreeing here, but remove the timer because...

 

27 minutes ago, admin said:

PB entry timer can be implemented. If you log off at sea, when you login you will receive a port battle entry lock blocking you form entering port battles for lets say 30 mins. This lock can be removed by entering any friendly/allied port.

 

...im definetely against this. Logging of is currently a workaround because screening is way to easy. I'd advise to not implement something which makes Port Battle entry impossible before we have thougt about how we actually want PBs to be. If we want to include screening, we have to make it possible for the attacker to actually fight the screening fleet, break through and fight the PB after.

[Cmdr RideZ]

5 min issue is that we often have small breaks in the BR Screen.  Toilet/Snack/Drinks/etc.  Then we come back and continue sailing.  5 minutes is just a very short break.

We also sometimes logout at sea, and continue the next day.  Mainly to save time.  Like if we have 1-2 hours to play, we know it is maybe 1 fight or max 2.  Mainly trying to decrease sailing time.

Invisibility of 5s would help when trying to run from revenge gank.  It wont help much, but it would help already.  As you have implemented invisibility already, would be also easy to test.  The main point is that you pop out, and you have time to set your sails and look around you.  Then turn to the best possible direction.  This can cause ganking, which already exists without timer as well, but not sure if the problems caused with a short invisibility are bigger than the issue fixed.  So I would start with that short invisibility, as it is easy and fast to test.

 

Also, if the hostility is won, I think the port battle should be fought.  Else the people wont care about hostility and only screen before battle, denying it from the group that already won the hostility.  So that 30 min timer, I do not see reason for that.

[Jacob Elston]

55 minutes ago, sruPL said:

Log off camping yes, but logout option should be added to the game officially. Here is my suggestion:

 

1. Logging out in battlescreen is important feature and there should be also official button, instead of using Alt+F4 or killing game proccess or whatever else players tend to do. But it should be limited! For example player can logout once every 6-12 hours (needs consideration what's the sweet spot). It's understandable that 1 battle can take 1,5 hour and after that player must leave game. But on the other side, it cannot be overused as advantage all the time, few times during one day. Official button + cooldown time for another use of it.

2. Battlescreen kick - Players get 5 minutes to manage ships, take cargo and after 5 minutes if they do not logout, they get kicked from battlescreen. Also make Battlescreen in form of Lobby, players can leave battlescreen before 5 minutes kick, if everyone in battlescreen lobby clicks "Ready" button, just like in groups when trying to join Small / Large Battle. Everyone in group must click ready and then players can join. This will prevent leaving 1 by 1 and trying to escape seperately.

3. As far as I know, you cannot enter battles for 2 minutes after logging in and leaving port... This is kinda outdated since the 2 minutes timer for battles is no longer in use. But it's weird that you can start tagging (attacking) enemies after 20 seconds! Make it so after logging into the game, player cannot attack enemies for 2 minutes as well. That will prevent "Battlescreen ambushes"

Only issue here is that players with start to use Alt+F4 again if the logout feature is in cooldown.

My suggestion is that players leaving battlescreen should be placed on the OW map either relative to where they were located when battle ended or placed in a random location (excluding land and shallows if a deep water ship) within an X radius of the battles original start location.

Also anyone logging in cannot join a battle or start one for 2 minutes, but they can be attacked after during this time.

[squedage]

think the easiest way to deal with port battle OW log is to make a zone around a hostile port were you cant log off at/ if you log/disconect it puts you at the edge of the hostile zone. This way if you dc you arent punished as bad for it if and it stops people from logging in right next to ports.

Escape is nice but would like to see if you jump out into open world it puts you X distance from were you came in to rep the time you spent sailing away. So say i sailled away from the enemy and managed to get away and out of the battle now when i jump out to open would im moved (in the direction traveled to escape) a rough amount of distance in that way in OW.

[Jacob Elston]

2 minutes ago, sruPL said:

If they use alt + f4 then they should not be logged out from game. Either logout delayed to 5 minutes + 2 minutes in OW so total 7 minutes. They can always come back if that was a game crash.

Your suggestion is kinda bad. Imagine situation: You are in full Indiaman sailing in empty ocean and suddenly 5 enemy ships appear in front of you. (They came here in combat). It was considered by admins in past.

The game crash not being considered a logout is a good idea (one I have argued for in other games such as DayZ), but I have always seen the prevailing argument back that people who loose network connection, suffer a power cut, their computer crashes, their game crashes etc.. will suffer.

As for the Indiaman sailing in an empty ocean and suddenly 5 enemy ships appear in front is no different to what can happen now. Only the "escaping" ship can do this, everything ship still in combat when the battle ends normally gets put back on OW in the original battle start location unless leaving the battle to OW is based on your in-battle location, then that is different.

[DeRuyter]

BS Camping/Revenge Gank issue

I like this proposal. A timer is necessary to limit camping and to provide notice to anyone outside whether anyone will be coming out. It still gives an option to those needing to log out of the game. I like sruPL's idea to add an official button so that you don't have to wait out the timer if you need to log out right away. I would add that you would get sent to nearest national port or free port.

Log off before PB

Harder solution on this one. You want to encourage PB and not make it too easy to screen off fleet, but at the same time leave screening as a valuable tactic. Really should not have Romulan battlecruisers decloaking right in front of PB to avoid interception. At the same time the defenders did have the opportunity to screen against the hostility in the first place. One point about screening though is that it provides something for players that don't have 1st rates or if a side has more than 25 players - more players from both sides can then participate in the screening/intercepting battles.

What about a protection zone around regional capitols where you cannot log out at sea so the enemy fleet still has to sail some distance to the port?

[Dekillos]

Всё это решается, как мне кажется, гораздо проще. Таймер на 25 мин для выхода из BS и невидимость в 30-50 секунд на выходе с невозможность производиь атаку в 1 мин, чтобы избежать бросков из инвиза. Такой таймер будет стимулировать выходить как можно раньше, т.к. чем дольше сидишь тем больше соберется снаружи, а невидимость позволит перегруппироваться и преимущество ревендж ганга будет меньшим. Выход группы нужно производить в одной точке, а не в рассыпную как сейчас, опять же, чтобы прогрузившиеся из инстанса не оказывались в проигрошной позиции.

Прежде чем вводить штраф на логофф надо решить проблему с отцеп-маринад флотами, когда флот даже подойти не может к ПБ. А то один "експлойт" уберем, другой оставим.

Интересно, откуда взялось 5 мин. Всем кто мало мальски пвпешится очевидно, что такой таймер крайне мал. По топику прям можно переписывать людей, которые в пвп не ходят или представителей ревендж флотов. Вы поражаете иногда своими предложениями.

Вы еще забыли про ситуации, когда игрок выходит из инстанса миссии прям в руки ганга не успев даже понять кто его хватает.

Предложение с телепортом будет замечательным способом для быстрого преодоления дистанций при помощи альта с другой нации. Сделаем еще один возможный эксплойт, потом его после вайна уберем, ага.

 

Edited December 6, 2016 by Dekillos

[jodgi]

1 hour ago, admin said:

if you escaped you escaped

I like. People will simply stop waiting for battle screen cherrypicking and everyone is forced to do their own OW hunting and intercepting. The "I wanna help my friends and don't like closed instanced" crowd will object but they object now and will continue unless we completely break solo and small group OW hunting.

[Powderhorn]

1 hour ago, admin said:

 

Escape (BR screen camping and revenge gank escape)

If you escaped the battle you no longer will be placed in the same spot in the open world - if you escaped you escaped. No need to try to give someone a second chance to get you. To do so we will give the player the option to either exit to the open world or teleport him to the certain friendly port (for example nearest friendly port).  That's what would real life captain would do in case of certain danger - try to escape to the nearest friendly port. Thus the player will have lets say 5 mins to decide if he wants to exit to the OW, if he did not make this choice he will be escape to port. 

TLDR: BR screen will force you to the nearest friendly port if you have not chosen to enter OW within 5 mins.

 

Assuming this 5 minutes keeps ticking after someone alt-F4s (which, as I read it, it does), I think this is the ideal solution, adding in an official button to teleport to the nearest friendly port so you don't need to wait 5 minutes unnecessarily.

[Top Quat]

I think a 30 minute moratorium on enter port battles after login at sea is too long. How about a 5 minute or 2 minute delay? Enough time to allow the "surprised by the login-at-sea" players or a screening PB fleet to react. But not so long as to waste 30 minutes. I'd also like a 2 minute moratorium on attacking.

I do see a possible issue. What happens if a recently logged in at sea ship is within the draw range of a battle initiated by another ship on the same side as the loginee? As in a fleet logs in at sea where a small ship of the same side is sailing. The small ship attacks an enemy, and the "surprise" fleet is drawn into the battle.

While not a login at sea issue, I'd like the delay when coming out of port to enter a mission to be eliminated (when entering one's one mission!)

I also like the idea of spawning in a different location after the end of a battle. Is it feasible to spawn in roughly the same location that one was located while in the battle? Ie. if one was sailing south for 20 minutes in the battle, then spawn after battle would be quite a bit south of battle entry.

[Vernon Merrill]

Well now that you've axed the coward perk, thank god, there is really no point to re-tagging a player who's gotten away.  They won, you lost.  The mindset of battle screen camping needs to go away.  Therefore, I am completely ok with the suggestions.  

[Slamz]

I like [admin's] solution #1.

For problem #2 I propose this:

When a port battle starts (you can click to enter), it puts a ring up around it, which you can see. If you log into the ring you must exit the ring and then turn around and sail back to the port before you can click in. (If you log in anywhere outside of the ring then it's fine. Sail to port and click in.)

Ring size is roughly "line of sight" range from the port. So basically if you pop into view of anyone sitting at the port, you will be too close. You don't have to sail to a friendly port and back but you must leave the ring.

This will allow people to log out before a port battle but they will have to log out some fair distance away, giving any interceptors a chance to grab them. You can't simply log out within clicking range.

Edited December 6, 2016 by Slamz

[Sea Archer]

for port battles a 5 min timer would be sufficient to be able to tag with a screening fleet. But the 30 min would be ok for me, too.

[Angus McGregor]

I like the Battle Screen exit options discussed here.

1. Escape to friendly/free port
2. Return to OW
3. Exit Game (why not?)

If the wait timer expires, auto select the escape option.  I don't have an issue with extending the wait timer to 10 minutes, I'd be unhappy with only a 5 minute break at work.

9 minutes ago, Slamz said:

For problem #2 I propose this:

When a port battle starts (you can click the enter), it puts a ring up around it, which you can see. If you log into the ring you must exit the ring and then turn around and get into the port before you can click in. (If you log in anywhere outside of the ring then it's fine. Sail to port and click in.)

Ring size is roughly "line of sight" range from the port. So basically if you pop into view of anyone sitting at the port, you will be too close. You don't have to sail to a friendly port and back but you must leave the ring.

This will allow people to log out before a port battle but they will have to log out some fair distance away, giving any interceptors a chance to grab them. You can't simply log out within clicking range.

Your suggestion for #2 is very similar to another that suggested using the port's green protection zone as the "can't spawn here from log in" area. Either is good, maybe the green zone would be easier to implement as it already exists.

I think a 30 minute ban on entering the PB from log in is too harsh. I should think that 10 minutes would be plenty.

I'm also in favor of keeping numbers the same as much as possible to cut down on the confusion factor. If all timeouts are 10 minutes then everyone knows how long any given timeout is. It may seem short'ish in some cases, long in others. But consistency is always good.

[vazco]

I really love it that you seem to have a more general strategy for development that you stick to (eg. limit time sink). I will comment ideas in a separate post  

 

Log off before battles / port battles

In my opinion it's enough to block someone who logged in from entering battles for 5 minutes. You probably don't have to block them for 30 minutes.

 

BR screen camping

Your proposition should work well. Insta-travel shouldn't be an issue, as you jump only one port at a time, including free ports.

Those changes would work best if they were paired with allowing players to enter battles for some time after they started (far away from the center of battle), as it would eliminate defense tagging of groups and would generate more PvP. It would eliminate a frustration coming from a fact that eg. a single guy wasn't dragged by a circle and won't have a chance to participate in a battle.

 

3 hours ago, JonSnowLetsGo said:

Why not make ships teleport back to the nearest friendly port when you log out for longer then 10 mins? There is no frustration caused by DCs anymore and I dont think its abusable since it puts you into the nearest port.

That's a great idea. Simple and elegant.

3 hours ago, Havelock said:

Logging of is currently a workaround because screening is way to easy. I'd advise to not implement something which makes Port Battle entry impossible

I don't agree with this. In last 8 PB's there was always an option to counter screening and we got into PB on time, provided we grouped on time. If a workaround was needed, a lobby would be a solution. not an exploit-like feature. Players opposed lobby though.   (which disappoints me, as I think lobby could work well with good hostility system that would allow for screening operations before the battle itself. Not listening to negative feedback here would be risky though)

[Nash]

Logging off before battle or anything should be allow in neutral or friendly zone only.

Remember you have the red word, green and nothing when you sail in open water?

we can use this as a tool to help players to know where they can logout.

Below is my suggestion.

How it works:
If you are in enemy water (red zone) you cannot logout. But if you escape a battle in red zone, you can choice either stay or teleport back to nearby friendly port.
If you want to logout, you MUST sail out of the red-zone. Reason: People who are in red zone know exactly what they are doing (ganking, raiding, hunting) if you want to stay safe, get out of the hostile water.

To make thing better for everyone, you (the devs) can play with the red-zone around a region. Far enough to make Port battle camp impossible But close enough to make people who need to logout don't need to sail 30 minutes before they can logout. My suggestion: red-zone should cover 7 to 10 minutes sailing time to the closest enemy port. We can use the yellow circle thing in map to determine how big the no-logout-zone can be.

If you are in green, neutral zone, you are welcome to any kind of log out.

Lastly, Teleport to capital: should it be allowed in red-zone? in my opinion it should.  Because you have 4 hours CD, sitting duck for 2 minutes is risky enough. But other people might have different opinions.

Edited December 6, 2016 by Nash

[Christendom]

No easy solution honestly without having to rework numerous things.  To limit the in and out of port hoppers (aka doing the petrus shuffle....) I'd suggest a 30 second re entry timer and then don't allow ships directly leaving port to attack for 30 seconds.  Once you pop out, you're out for 30 seconds.  

I still like the suggestion I made in the night flips thread about changing how battles are spawned, which would solve the logging out under the swords issue.  

Maybe have something where hostility needs to be generated to "unlock" a system (which would prevent multiple flag pulls) and then expand the old flag system to actually trigger the port battle within an expanded set of hours set by the the port owners where the attackers need to run in the flag within that window, also helping the "night flip" issue.

So lets use Savannah as an example.  

- Attackers run up hostility via missions, war supplies or pvp.  100% region unlocks.
- Region triggers a port battle flag (conquest flag?) 46 hours later.  Lets made the window last for 4 hours 
- Attackers need to escort the flag in and trigger the battle within the time set.  

[Busterbloodvessel]

 

I posted this last month but some may not have read it.

My solutions to the battle screen exploit and the battle camping exploit.

1.       Get rid of the blue ‘Battle Screen’.

2.       To avoid the post battle “disconnect and wait” exploit. When the “BATTLE OVER” message is shown at the end of a battle start a 10 minute period of grace. After 10 mins:

a.       If you are on-line you are booted to open world.

b.      If you have disconnected your ship auto enters OW with the normal 2min exit count-down (where you are vulnerable ) to a normal exit.

3.       To avoid or reduce Battle Camping : A player exiting a battle enters Open World at the Battle Map co-ordinates (not the original open world battle entry co-ordinates as at the moment). This will also allow a “BATTLE OVER” player to sail in any permissible direction for up to 10 mins. This will make battle camping more difficult.

So, I hear you say, what about my prize loot! For that I suggest the following:

1.      Send the now defunct "Battle Screen" information as an “Admiralty report” to the player’s message box telling what’s been won/lost and the damage done etc. which can be viewed at leisure later on in OW.

2.      Send any battle prize ships to the nearest national port owned by the player which has an empty slot. If no slots are available then either put in fleet or if no space send the ship to the admiralty and award prize gold.

3.      All battle won prize materials up to the available remaining hold space of the capturing ship either a) transfer to current ship or send to nearest owned port or c) award prize gold or d) some combination of each.

AND !!!

1.      Extend the Capital teleport facility every 4 hours to ANY owned national port. 

2.    Allow available auto crew resupply in OW (to replace Battle Screen crew management).

3.    That's it

3.    Still 3. That really is the lot. For now.

 

Simples!

Buster Bloodvessel’s Parrot