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Assist for escaped ships, make control perk standard ROE


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While playing/testing on the Test bed server we encountered something that IMO is very discouraging for PvP. We had a PvP battle lasting 1,5 hour on the test bed. We where two Victorys and a Agamemnon VS 3 Victorys, a Renommee and a basic cutter. During this battle we lost the Agamemnon,  but we damaged two Victorys and the Renomme so much that they where forced to escape to save their ships. So in the end we where two Victorys vs one enemy Victory, but then the battle timer run out.

So after a 1,5 hour long battle, where we where out numbered and outgunned do you know what we got?
Well the Aga player lost his redeemable ship and cannons (-250.000 gold est. for cannons alone), and we who survived got -25 xp, 0 gold and 0 xp! It was a really good fight, and yes we should have focused the damaged ships so they could not leave left the battle. But giving nothing at all for damage!? We lost money on crew and repairs.. 

The devs might be developing a brilliant solution for this issue, or they might not consider this an issue at all.  But if we get nothing for trying and only a massive penalty for failing. Then PvP on the PvP server isn't looking very tempting for me at least..  

That got me thinking, why do we never get anything when we damage a enemy ship so much that it is forced to escape from the battle? If it's because of fear of abuse, then just smack a timer on it. We should get a reward for removing a enemy ship from the battle IMO. It does not fix the 0 gold and 0 xp for damage issue completely, but it gives at least some sort of reward for the effort..   

Lets say the enemy ship needs to have lost more than 75% of it's armor/hp and have been in the battle for more than 60 minutes. If it then escapes, assists and handed out those who did the most damage. If somebody want's to exploit this, they need to stay at least 60 minutes in the battle, and that is a very time consuming exploit option. Not to mention you would only get the assist, not the kill.

Anyone see a obvious issue with this?

ADDED suggestion: Make the control perk standard ROE for all players. The range could be reduced, but enemy ships in the middle of the battle should not be able to magically escape right in front of you just because it is not taged. That is not realistic at all, just bad game play. And we should not be forced to use perks to obtain a more realistic battle experience imo. 

Edited by Tiedemann
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Welcome to hard core mode that only rewards the winners or those that kill folks.  You get nothing for helping unless the end product is a kill.  I think what would help is if you where rewarded the assist even if the ship wasn't sunk reward.  A smaller persentage of the xp/credits off your damge, but the marks and full rewards are only for kills.

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1 hour ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Welcome to hard core mode that only rewards the winners or those that kill folks.  You get nothing for helping unless the end product is a kill.  I think what would help is if you where rewarded the assist even if the ship wasn't sunk reward.  A smaller persentage of the xp/credits off your damge, but the marks and full rewards are only for kills.

Yeah, with how long fights can take in this game it makes sense to at least get some XP.

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56 minutes ago, Jarlath Morrow said:

Yeah, with how long fights can take in this game it makes sense to at least get some XP.

And lets not even go into the ship xp grind to not get xp for a fight even if you didn't sink something?  I get not getting gold or marks, but you should still get your xp off damage done.

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6 hours ago, Tiedemann said:

Lets say the enemy ship needs to have lost more than 75% of it's armor/hp and have been in the battle for more than 60 minutes. If it then escapes, assists and handed out those who did the most damage. If somebody want's to exploit this, they need to stay at least 60 minutes in the battle, and that is a very time consuming exploit option. Not to mention you would only get the assist, not the kill.

Anyone see a obvious issue with this? 

Why get rewarded for trying? I get that's it's frustrating when an enemy calls it quits and runs, but that's the woes of pvp. Come with a faster ship or work on disabling the ship when you know you're winning on the damage front. I don't even think  you get assists now in the new xp system. I am a fan on xp from damage given as @Sir Texas Sir mentioned. Also not sure why xp for assists was removed.

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8 hours ago, Tiedemann said:

While playing/testing on the Test bed server we encountered something that IMO is very discouraging for PvP. We had a PvP battle lasting 1,5 hour on the test bed. We where two Victorys and a Agamemnon VS 3 Victorys, a Renommee and a basic cutter. During this battle we lost the Agamemnon,  but we damaged two Victorys and the Renomme so much that they where forced to escape to save their ships. So in the end we where two Victorys vs one enemy Victory, but then the battle timer run out.

So after a 1,5 hour long battle, where we where out numbered and outgunned do you know what we got?
Well the Aga player lost his redeemable ship and cannons (-250.000 gold est. for cannons alone), and we who survived got -25 xp, 0 gold and 0 xp! It was a really good fight, and yes we should have focused the damaged ships so they could not leave left the battle. But giving nothing at all for damage!? We lost money on crew and repairs.. 

The devs might be developing a brilliant solution for this issue, or they might not consider this an issue at all.  But if we get nothing for trying and only a massive penalty for failing. Then PvP on the PvP server isn't looking very tempting for me at least..  

That got me thinking, why do we never get anything when we damage a enemy ship so much that it is forced to escape from the battle? If it's because of fear of abuse, then just smack a timer on it. We should get a reward for removing a enemy ship from the battle IMO. It does not fix the 0 gold and 0 xp for damage issue completely, but it gives at least some sort of reward for the effort..   

Lets say the enemy ship needs to have lost more than 75% of it's armor/hp and have been in the battle for more than 60 minutes. If it then escapes, assists and handed out those who did the most damage. If somebody want's to exploit this, they need to stay at least 60 minutes in the battle, and that is a very time consuming exploit option. Not to mention you would only get the assist, not the kill.

Anyone see a obvious issue with this? 

sorry for the sunk aga :P

 

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Gold is a big a problem as XP, in my opinion, As @Tiedemann says, the player who lost the Agamemnon got nothing - well, maybe that is fair enough - but nor did anyone else. The players who need gold are those who lose ships, but if they get nothing even for successful combat - and surely the two players in Victories were successful - then where does this leave them?

So far as I can tell (I've only really being trying this out in small ships - it might not scale up to Victories and Agamemnons), you need about 8 similar-rated PvE kills in a ship to pay for the ship and guns; With PvP giving treble rewards (does this include gold?), it'll mean three kills. Well, clearly not every player will get 3 PvP kills in their new ship when faced with equal opponents. Fight-to-the-death battles with equal numbers of captains on each side clearly results in the average number of PvP kills per player per ship being 1. For many individual players it is 0.

So where does this shortfall in gold come from? In the current game, I see four ways:

  1. Find PvP opponents you are almost certain to win against. Ganking and seal-clubbing will get you the gold you need - but is it really good for the game?
  2. Grind PvE. In some of the dev posts they mention the number of PvE players (90% is it?) and how they want to move them to PvP. Current game rewards push players the other way, and PvP players are forced into PvE simply to get gold.
  3. Go trading. Really, is this the best thing on offer? Now, I'm an econ player and don't much mind a bit of trading to get my start-up capital, but I stop as soon as I've enough outposts, buildings, ship and warehouse slots. But the poor PvP player will be forced to dip his wick repeatedly into this malodorous oil if he wants to keep his lamp burning.
  4. Craft. Crafting for profit doesn't bring gold into the game, it merely shifts some of the gold obtained from PvE or Trading (or possibly successful PvP, but the successful players won't need to buy much) into your hands. It also means surrendering LH you might prefer to keep to make your own ships, guns and repairs. And you've got all the hauling of resources and carrying your goods to market. Now, I like this style of play and I dare say a number of PvP players do too, but it's hardly a ringing advertisement for an OW PvP game: Experience thrilling ship combat against other players from the greatest era in the Age of Sail. Oh, and you'll have to spend time hauling logs in a lumbering trader with a gank me lamp on the main truck. Because that's what real navy captains did in the age of sail, innit?

The devs' current focus seems to be avoiding exploits, to the extent they ignore the effect on the rest of us, on enjoyable gameplay. So we have rewards only for kills, the idea being that alts won't want to destroy their own ships to get gold/xp/marks (it's flawed, of course - were I that sort of player of course I'd be willing to sink a few brigs to get marks for a fourth rate - and I'd certainly provide opponents for an uncontested PB to get marks of conquest). But for good gameplay we need rewards for participation, not just for kills. Rewarding damage makes most sense to me, but it could be calculated from duration, BR, or any number of other things.

Furthermore, combat gold rewards, even for those who get kills, seem a little too low. The average PvP player mentioned above will have 1 winning and 1 losing battle. If participation is rewarded and both battles give the same gold as the winner currently gets, this still won't pay for replacement. One way of balancing it would be for non-winning participants to get roughly what winners get now, and winners to get double what they get now.

Finally, because this added gold will fuel inflation as the successful 10% of PvP captains get very rich, the game needs something for the wealthy to spend their money on. Perhaps some of the elite ships could cost shedloads of gold as well as marks.

Edited by Remus
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31 minutes ago, Remus said:

The devs' current focus seems to be avoiding exploits, to the extent they ignore the effect on the rest of us, on enjoyable gameplay. 

I really really hate to say it but I think this is spot on about how they been doing every thing.  I agree with the rest of the stuff you said too, but it seems they are making a lot of these changes for this and not doing what they shoudl be doing.   PUNISHING THOSE THAT GET CAUGHT.   We have found so many ways around certain things on test bed simply cause of how hard they made it to do things and the grind.  They seem to forget when you make something hard for folks, it drives them to find something easier to get around it.   Some of the problems have been fixed but not all, but I don't get the reason to hurt the rest of the plaeyrs that are playing the game fairly.

1 hour ago, Duncan McFail said:

Why get rewarded for trying? I get that's it's frustrating when an enemy calls it quits and runs, but that's the woes of pvp. Come with a faster ship or work on disabling the ship when you know you're winning on the damage front. I don't even think  you get assists now in the new xp system. I am a fan on xp from damage given as @Sir Texas Sir mentioned. Also not sure why xp for assists was removed.

You only get rewarded if the ship is killed, you still get assist on that kill though, but unless the ship is sunk no one gets any rewards.  Though one good thing is if you get sunk by your buddies sink a ship afterwards, as along as you did enough damage to get the Assist/kill you still get rewarded even though you sunk too.

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This is the problem with giving redeemable firsts and aggies.  These ships are now expected to be EXPENSIVE to operate.  They are to be the exception rather than the rule, such as before. 

Its a lot like when they did the Buccentaure on the live server. I can't tell you how many rascals and 1st lieutenants I saw trying to sail these things.  To the point where the market got saturated by them.  

People need to understand and accept that it's a different world now. Small/ medium ships are here, whether anyone likes it or not.  Money issues are here whether anyone likes it or not. Challenge is here whether anyone likes it or not.  

Some people who preferred the "open access easy-cash mode" will become frustrated and leave.  Some people who hated the "where's the challenge when everyone's a multi-millionaire" and left will come back for the challenge.  

Froma distance, it looks like RvR will be difficult and meaningful again.  Those who play just for Port battles will probably hate it.  Those who like the game Risk will probably love it.  

Just remember, for everyone that says the game is dead and quits, there will be someone to replace him when the game launches and is advertised.  It's a niche game, but it's not THAT much of a niche game.  I know a number of people interested who are just waiting for the finished product.  

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1 hour ago, Cornelis Tromp said:

That wasn't the issue. The 90 minutes of fighting without any reward is.

 

No decisive outcome after 90 minutes is the issue. :)

It costs money to put a ship on a cruise that is what we, captains, must account for. Expenditure versus possible outcome. Costs me eight cruises to get the outcome of one raid of full haul that pays them all. Letting seven of them let go for several reasons is part of the nature of the age of sail.

Now, 90 minutes of combat with no results to show, did not yield results to either side so to speak ( no one wins ). Was a inconclusive result for a failed cruise which ended in a unremarkable battle.

Given that for long the devs, and for several times, did state that no rewards would be given for damage alone with no sinking/capture of the enemy ships I fear that essential information might have been overlooked.

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32 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

No decisive outcome after 90 minutes is the issue. :)

It costs money to put a ship on a cruise that is what we, captains, must account for. Expenditure versus possible outcome. Costs me eight cruises to get the outcome of one raid of full haul that pays them all. Letting seven of them let go for several reasons is part of the nature of the age of sail.

Now, 90 minutes of combat with no results to show, did not yield results to either side so to speak ( no one wins ). Was a inconclusive result for a failed cruise which ended in a unremarkable battle.

Given that for long the devs, and for several times, did state that no rewards would be given for damage alone with no sinking/capture of the enemy ships I fear that essential information might have been overlooked.

I can see not getting Marks, or other monetary reward, cargo, etc. But fighting each other to a standstill is worth XP. It should at least be worth points toward a skill box in that ship. Experience comes from the fighting. Sadly, if I don't want to be a psychotic death-match player, I get nothing. There is no longer any reason to be nice to a challenging, honorable, but defeated opponent.

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What if the opponent decides that the encounter is leading nowhere and decides to call it off and escape ? Not all battles must be a win or lose contest ( depends on captains of course ). 

Of if a raider decides the tag is bad even after making some damage ? Sometimes rewards are quite indirect. Example being a trader LGV being jumped by a Snake, if he fights off the Snake forcing it to retreat...well.. he doesn't lose his cargo.

As a mechanic that doesn't award anything if there's no decisive result, seems okay. At the very very very least solves dmg reward exploits and that IS good.

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It should be an interesting experiment with the new rules set.  The fact you don't get xp or gold unless a battle is decisive puts the rewards in the hands of the Econ game. It makes Econ more important than Pvp fights in a way.  As someone said above, we're not playing checkers anymore this is now chess or Risk.  RvR is going to become as dependent on the Econ game of clans as much as their PvP prowess.  We should see the OW ships shrink in size. We should see 1st rates become rare not only due to difficulty to build but the risk of loss. If you don't need 25 1st rates to get done what you can do with 25 Bellonas players will now go with the Bellonas. But more importantly we should see the Econ game grow and become more important than it was. Let's be honest, it used to be a joke. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen.

The fact you got no rewards after 90min of fighting didn't actually diminish the thrill of the fight or the entertainment value of the PvP.  It simply didn't meet a predetermined expectation you had from previously playing a game that did hand out rewards.  Players will need to find other means to support their PvP other than purely PvP.  They will need to take part in other aspects of the game they used to ignore. Be it PVE, Econ or hauling for gold.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Bach
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The rules of engagement are simple: kill what you can in 1.5 hours. Failure to meet battle objectives should not result in a reward.

The only thing worth consideration here is maybe they should increase the battle timer to 2 hours given that we now have multiple repairs. Personally I don't think that's necessary.

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In real life the enemy captains in this particular battle would all risk demotion for not succeeding in a battle they should have won easily. Also the damaged ships that escaped would all be at risk for ending up as a ship wreak on their voyage to a friendly harbor. Then consider that they would have to stay in port for several month or even years to repair, do we seriously deserve nothing for destroying several SOL's so much they had to escape?

In real life we would have been knighted for our heroic survival against the odds. Then we would have got to marry some danish princesses and the king would surly have hand out some land areas to sweeten the deal.. We got NOTHING!

If we only get rewards for sinking enemy ships, we will all avoid entering battles where we are not guaranteed to win. This might be how most NA players in larger nations already operate. But for players from a small nation that is how we normally fight. We are used to fighting against the odds and we belive we can win each time. While we are stupid, we do provide other and often larger nations with game play. But if we not have no chanse of winning when we are outnumbered, and are not rewarded for trying, this part of the game will disappear. And I fear that all that is left is ganking battles.. And the Zergs and ex EVE online players loves that shit, but for me that is not interesting.

Back to the battle that ruined test bed for me at least. Imagine this scenario, there is a demasted Victory with 400 crew left, has no armor left on any of it's sides and just a little bit more than 2 bars of internal structure left. It is sitting 250-300 meters away from you in a battle and because you can't shot him/her for a couple of seconds he get's to escape!?
Then imagine that it happens again within 5 minutes with another Victory in a similar state.. Even the Renomme was half dead and joined in a "tactical retreat", but who cares about a Renomme in SOL battle anyway..

Am I the only one who get's annoyed when a enemy ship that is badly damaged can just escape from the center of the battle field, because we forgot to tag him? Where is the logic in that!? Enemy ships that are in close proximity of each other during a battle should not be able to leave. We had the control perk that kinda this out. The only problem with that was that is was made a perk. It should just be standard ROE for all.

Warning to all Americans! This last section here is not a serous suggestion.
And then I have a contingency suggestion in case nobody likes my original suggestions (based on pure brilliance and logic I might add). What about demoting all players that escape battles before the timer runs out? They do retreat, and that is losing. It would have an awesome instant effect. Like 1 rank each time you escape a battle.. Might increase the amount of afk sailing we do, but if it's implemented at the same time as the the new patch. I doubt it will effect the overall afk sailing stats much..
Warning to all Americans! This last section here is not a serous suggestion.

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It is very logical that a ship that escapes a battle due to damage, should result in some type of reward for the enemy team. Especially if the team that the ship that escaped was on had the BR advantage. The other side of that coin is, a ship that is able to escape a battle with little to no damage, especially if it was on the disadvantaged (lower BR) team, should result in a reward for saving their ship in situation where victory was unlikely anyway.

So perhaps what we need here is a reward system applied to escaping that:

1) Rewards the disadvantaged team ( lower BR) for extracting their ships intact from an unwinnable situation. These rewards would require the escapee to be on the disadvantaged team and to escape with their ship armor, structure, sails or crew or a combination thereof still at or above a certain percentage.

2) Rewards a team, regardless of BR, for inflicting so much damage to a ship that the ship has to escape.  These rewards would require the escapee to have lost a certain % of their armor, structure, sails, crew or a combination thereof.

These rewards probably should not be as much as we would receive for sinking a ship, but should still be equivalent to the effort needed to accomplish the feat.

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20 hours ago, The Red Duke said:

Of if a raider decides the tag is bad even after making some damage ? Sometimes rewards are quite indirect. Example being a trader LGV being jumped by a Snake, if he fights off the Snake forcing it to retreat...well.. he doesn't lose his cargo.

The key word here are more than 60 minutes and more than 75% damage to it. If a LGV does that to A Rattle Snake, and then the Rattle Snake is the ship that escapes the battle, that LGV just won a glorious victory imo. He could have fought off black beard him self ffs. I'm sure he learned something form that battle and that his trading company would reward him for succeeding.

The assist reward for an escaped ship like I'm suggesting can be hard capped, so you never get more than 5% of the XP/gold for example. The point is you did something, you tried and why not give us a tiny clap on the back for it?

So if players want to exploit this, they would have to put at least 60 minutes into it each time and they would never get more than 5% xp and gold. That is a time consuming and not very rewording, so who would bother exploiting this? Right now PvE is more rewording than that. My only reason behind this is so we do not leave a long battle with nothing, because that is game breaking imo.

20 hours ago, The Red Duke said:

What if the opponent decides that the encounter is leading nowhere and decides to call it off and escape ? Not all battles must be a win or lose contest ( depends on captains of course ). 

If the fight has lasted for more that 60 minutes and you have done more than 75% dmg to a enemy war ship, and it then decides to run away from you and escape the battle. IMO you have just won that battle. You forced the enemy to run away.. It is not a complete victory, but when you leave that fight with 0 gold and 0 xp it will be very disappointing.

To justify it a bit more. After a encounter that last more than 60 minutes and you do more than 75% damage to a enemy ship, where the end result is that the enemy ship just runs away and escapes. You must have learned something after that. You might want a faster ship, you should have focused on masts, maybe you want mare sail repairs next time you leve port... And Kontreadmiral's/Rear Admirals got payed for doing their job back in the day right? So what is the issue here?  

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There is no issue, just presentation of points of view. :)

Game rewards can be adjusted regarding the PvP ( there is another on going thread on that ). And PvP is already more rewarding than PvE by a fair margin.

Was reviewing all my battles and the average is under 20 minutes. The over 60 minutes is so so rare that was indeed very specific condition, usually with one of the sides making a running fight.

Sometimes pushing the chase can be worth and after those 60 minutes the battle is won. Others was really a bad call and should've called it off ( as I do a lot of times, the expenditure of effort wouldn't reward ).

Navy officers were expected to engaged and payed a full salary in times of war. Any extra prizes would be taken to court and navy board. That's the flat sad truth.

Traders is worse, much worse, to the point where those that wouldn't fight off "sea rovers" would be ALSO accused of collusion with the sea roving lifestyle and could be disciplined ( and ultimately hanged for pyracy ). Their rewards was their cargo and their lives :)

Let's say a squadron faces a squadron, all ships sunk during the 90 minutes combat will yield rewards to the captains that participated.

A 1v1 is not the most common thing in the OW and that's where the "personal decision of time effort versus potential reward" comes into play.

 

 

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14 hours ago, Tiedemann said:

In real life the enemy captains in this particular battle would all risk demotion for not succeeding in a battle they should have won easily. Also the damaged ships that escaped would all be at risk for ending up as a ship wreak on their voyage to a friendly harbor. Then consider that they would have to stay in port for several month or even years to repair, do we seriously deserve nothing for destroying several SOL's so much they had to escape?

In real life we would have been knighted for our heroic survival against the odds. Then we would have got to marry some danish princesses and the king would surly have hand out some land areas to sweeten the deal.. We got NOTHING!

If we only get rewards for sinking enemy ships, we will all avoid entering battles where we are not guaranteed to win. This might be how most NA players in larger nations already operate. But for players from a small nation that is how we normally fight. We are used to fighting against the odds and we belive we can win each time. While we are stupid, we do provide other and often larger nations with game play. But if we not have no chanse of winning when we are outnumbered, and are not rewarded for trying, this part of the game will disappear. And I fear that all that is left is ganking battles.. And the Zergs and ex EVE online players loves that shit, but for me that is not interesting.

Back to the battle that ruined test bed for me at least. Imagine this scenario, there is a demasted Victory with 400 crew left, has no armor left on any of it's sides and just a little bit more than 2 bars of internal structure left. It is sitting 250-300 meters away from you in a battle and because you can't shot him/her for a couple of seconds he get's to escape!?
Then imagine that it happens again within 5 minutes with another Victory in a similar state.. Even the Renomme was half dead and joined in a "tactical retreat", but who cares about a Renomme in SOL battle anyway..

Am I the only one who get's annoyed when a enemy ship that is badly damaged can just escape from the center of the battle field, because we forgot to tag him? Where is the logic in that!? Enemy ships that are in close proximity of each other during a battle should not be able to leave. We had the control perk that kinda this out. The only problem with that was that is was made a perk. It should just be standard ROE for all.

Warning to all Americans! This last section here is not a serous suggestion.
And then I have a contingency suggestion in case nobody likes my original suggestions (based on pure brilliance and logic I might add). What about demoting all players that escape battles before the timer runs out? They do retreat, and that is losing. It would have an awesome instant effect. Like 1 rank each time you escape a battle.. Might increase the amount of afk sailing we do, but if it's implemented at the same time as the the new patch. I doubt it will effect the overall afk sailing stats much..
Warning to all Americans! This last section here is not a serous suggestion.

Just spend the perk points and sail with Area Control on if this is a big concern for you.  I'm going to just remember to tap hit the wounded ship till we get around to sinking it.  If I forget and he manages an escape to open sea good for him if we don't just grab him again.

Escaping battle is neither a win nor a loss. Demoting players because they choose not to fight a particular battle is a bit extreme.  It's back to the computer determining things vs. players.  If a player decides not to fight its up to you to figure out how to get them. Not some invisible computer hand determining fights.  We had plenty of that last year and it just doesn't work.  If I had my way I would get rid of the current unrealistic computer enforced BR RoE.  We would have more decisive battles if it did not exist.

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