ship xp PLEASE: Change ship XP system

[Navalus Magnus]

Dear Devs,

PLEASE change the running system of inter-dependent ship XP gaining, because of the following reasons (anybody else who thinks the same please add other reasons you have):

1. For me it's a massive "fun-killer" in this game to grind XP on lots of ships i don't want to sail, just to get the upgrade slots to the maximum on vessels i would really like to sail!

2. For me it's a massive "time-killer" too - Naval Action takes time, yes, but on the contrary to trading and so on, this grinding for XP feels useless and boring to me.

3. If you play Naval Action - for a certain amount of time - you have to sail in smaller ships or ships you propably won't use again later on. Everyone has (had) these time, that's ok. But the current inter-dependent XP system prolongs this period artificially in such an extreme way that it feels everything else but ok.

4. The grindig in it's current state can't be supported by historical data: Back in the days, to become captain of a ship of the frigate-class for example, noone would have had to sail every differnt kind of lower classified vessel. AND if someone has already been captain of a certain frigate he wouldn't have to sail a lower classified ship again just to be able to get the command of a frigate different to the one he sailed at his last command.

 

Because of these reasons please abolish or at least change that system!

You could change it like this for example:

A. Make it easyser, better fitting to historical data and much less a grind, if you change it, so that everybody needs just to sail a random ship of one tier to be able to get every ship of the next tier to maximum upgrad slots. For example: If one sails a cutter, lynx or other 7th rate to the maximum amount of freed upgrade slots, he / she would be able to do so with every 6th rate and so on.

B. If you want people to sail small ships open areas where they just could sail 7th rates because of extreme shallow waters (someone else has already mentioned this idea in the forums i think) and abolish that whole system of inter-dependent ship XP.

 

I really like Naval Action but in this particular case i beg you: Please take ACTION to make it a LOT better!

Edited June 5, 2017 by Navalus Magnus

[Nelsons Barrel]

On top of that: The implementation of the grind-tree is more than lazy, so if you unlock the second slot, so you need to upgrind a lower tiered ship to get the next slot and still gain XP on that bigger ship, your gained XP is lost. So if you do not keep exactly track where you are right now in the grind-tree you loose a lot of time and XP.

If i would only need to grind my beloved conni, i wouldn't complain that much, but that i need to grind for it the by me hated endymion, and also the even more by me behated trincomalee and also the surprise and for that the renomee, and for that the mercury and for that the privateer and for that the basic cutter... this is just out of my mind how somebody could think that this an expierience you want to give somebody.

[Siegfried]

The system is for normal gameplay when you begin from rank 1. Then the progress is natural, not forced. The problem is the XP redemable when a player comes and is admiral from minute 1. Is the same with the prices of ships and cannons and admirals with 0 gold.

[Hethwill]

Starting with no XP the progression is natural. Reaching 150 crew rank now and have all necessary ships at 5 slots, meaning the basic, the privateer and the pickle. Onwards to Brig and Mercury given they are the follow ups respectively.

Given there's no need for full 5 slots ( most is 3 or 4 ) it would be even faster for anyone that doesn't like the schooners.

 

[Guruthos]

1 hour ago, Navalus Magnus said:

Because of these reasons please abolish or at least change that system!

You could change it like this for example:

A. Make it easyser, better fitting to historical data and much less a grind, if you change it, so that everybody needs just to sail a random ship of one tier to be able to get every ship of the next tier to maximum upgrad slots. For example: If one sails a cutter, lynx or other 7th rate to the maximum amount of freed upgrade slots, he / she would be able to do so with every 6th rate and so on.

 

First of all somehow i like it to sail ships i never thought about sailing before. But some ships are really terrible to fight with and it makes really lose the motivation.

Solutions for this are in my point of view either what Navalus Magnus said, i just don't agree in the 5 slots and it should be lowered to 3 slots, or simply make people able to unlock by XP any ship from the start on but raise the necessary XP a lot. Then you can give bonus if you unlocked the slots on lover ships in the already existing. as example you want to use the surprise ... you can lvl it. but if you already leveled the renomee you just need 50% of th original XP. if you already unlocked the snow reduce by another 50% so there are just 25% of the original XP left and so on. If you follow the "line of ships" like it is now it should need less XP then it does now. So if you really hate a ship you can skip it but  you will need more XP on the following ships. if yxou decide later that you wanna go back to the small ships because grinding takes too long because you skiped some ships you will be able to reduce necessary Xp afterwards but keeping the XP you already made on ships.

another thing i read in a different post is an xp pool for each ship class. there was suggested to give like 50% of the XP you eraned with 1 ship of a calss to all others. I would change it a little so you maybe get 90% of the XP of the first slot 80% of the second 70% of the third and so on. this would simulate that ships are a little different and you specialize to a ship more and more. aswell it would make people try more ships cause unlocking the lower slots on different ships give more XP in the pool then just unlocking the high slots on 1 or 2 ships. The XP pool should end at slot 4 so if you wanna have 5th slot on a spezific ship you still need to gain the XP for the last slot.

 

Edited June 5, 2017 by Guruthos

[Jones el Tuerto]

I like the exp on ships but i don't like to unlock for example the privateer upgrades to unlock all my surprise or any other ship. I don't want to do missions in a privateer or pickle to fully unlock any other ship. I think it should be exp on each ship and you can fully unlock it playing only on that ship like it happens for example with the Niagara.

[Stilgar]

It's good to encourage players to sail different ships, but knowledge tree system is more like forcing it. This is really a major annoyance in the group I play. Perhaps reducing the nr of required slots on low-tier to open slots in higher-tier ships should be decreased. Say, to open all slots on surp, one need 3 slots on privateer, 3 slots on merc, 2 slots on reno. This would encourage players to try various ships, but would not result in a too annoying grind.

[Vaan De Vries]

Agreed completely.

I am not against tire-based xp, but ship-based with different trees for SOLs and Frigates means insane grind.

I will be eternally grateful if this system was either removed or somewhat tweaked.

[Remus]

3 hours ago, The Red Duke said:

Starting with no XP the progression is natural. Reaching 150 crew rank now and have all necessary ships at 5 slots, meaning the basic, the privateer and the pickle. Onwards to Brig and Mercury given they are the follow ups respectively.

Given there's no need for full 5 slots ( most is 3 or 4 ) it would be even faster for anyone that doesn't like the schooners.

 

No it isn't. I've just turned 1st Lt (didn't redeem xp); I've finished grinding the Pickle to slot 3 (no need to go higher) but haven't started the Privateer.

What ship am I meant to be on at this level? Brig/Snow, or am I at the Mercury level, I forget?

[Hethwill]

15 minutes ago, Remus said:

No it isn't. I've just turned 1st Lt (didn't redeem xp); I've finished grinding the Pickle to slot 3 (no need to go higher) but haven't started the Privateer.

What ship am I meant to be on at this level? Brig/Snow, or am I at the Mercury level, I forget?

First Lieutenant is 150 crew, so yeah can be a Mercury a Navy Brig or even a slightly undercrewed Niagara.

Myself, like to keep a buffer of crew in the pool to cover losses without having to rehire so i'm sticking with the Pickle/Brig for the moment being on one outpost and Privateer on another, both in opposite sides of the world.

Granted PvP helps a lot with ship knowledge but the normal 3 and 4 slots are very straightforward up to the 120 crew 6th rates.

Did unlock the basic cutter full, no idea if it influences anything.

 

[Remus]

1 hour ago, The Red Duke said:

Did unlock the basic cutter full, no idea if it influences anything.

 

Me too. It doesn't (I've now colour coded a spreadsheet to make it easier for me to see, from the API that @Black Spawn posted - link below). Basic cutter, pickle and privateer just need 3. Brig needs 4 (or 5 for the Navy Brig or Mortar Brig which are dead ends in the knowledge tree); Snow needs 3.

One of the things so many of us are complaining about is if we just rely on what the game tells us, we get the information the wrong way round. You only discover you need to grind a Privateer, say, when you've already unlocked 2 slots in a Mercury. You've probably already sold that Privateer because ship slots are so expensive, and it's now two levels below your rank so you don't really want to go back. On the other hand you may spend hours unlocking everything in a Navy Brig or Niagara because you think they'll be needed for a later ship, but they aren't.

[Hethwill]

Totally correct. It is retro-active and provokes some discomfort..

[Gysendorf]

13 hours ago, Siegfried said:

The system is for normal gameplay when you begin from rank 1. Then the progress is natural, not forced. The problem is the XP redemable when a player comes and is admiral from minute 1. Is the same with the prices of ships and cannons and admirals with 0 gold.

The ship knowledge tree forces you to sail the brig, which is imho the weakest ship of the 6th rank, and the fun fact is not only to ship knowledge slot 3 a minimum of 4 is necessary. If you follow the tree you wont sail the navy brig because it is a dead end, mercury rattlesnake and niagara arent necessary to sail.

Back in the golden age, I captued a npc navy brig with my brig and sailed it until I bought a mercury. This was fun but actual state its frustrating - so no fun and no action. Another fun fact, I found out with the brig that the 2nd Lt . rank solo missions you get always as enemy navy brig/mercury or rattlesnake and a pickle against you, if you play 1st Lt. solo missions you get only one 6th rate ship, most times brig sometimes two pickles as enemies.

But wait for the Cerberus, there you get a huge problem. You also sail the weakest 5th rate SoL but there you cant play any solo missions anymore, you have to play one rank higher fleet missions where a minimum of 3 bigger 5th rate ships awaits you. If you team up with another Cerb, you have a minimum of 5 enemy against the two Cerbs. Thats an epic well designed mission design with an epic well designed ship knowledge tree, if you hate this game. So compared with the past, the past was a golden age for leveling. If I would be a new player and found out what I found out today, I would deinstall the game and would try to get my money back, this is not a major design flaw this is in the top five of worst game design I ever met and I played Sierras Outpost.

[Siegfried]

The system is not perfect, but as I said when you are new into the game, the brig is not the weakest ship, because the last ship you sailed was probably the pickle and the next stronger ship needs too many crew to sail. You need to see this from the new player perspective.

The Nbrig is the strongest 6th ship I think. But is slower too. From a new player perspective, they can win Nbrigs in their brigs too, the outcome is not sure.

Missions needs to be looked by devs maybe, but they are not a excuse for the ship's rank system.

And from my perspective, the Brig is one of the most fun ships in the game now. Fastest 6th and the best turner too. And Nbrig is the strongest, and with the absence of HRattlesnakes is the basic ship for shallow port battles meta now.

As you can understand, they wouldn't delete a system because John Smith and Manuel Garcia hates a pair of ships.

[Gysendorf]

34 minutes ago, Siegfried said:

The system is not perfect, but as I said when you are new into the game, the brig is not the weakest ship, because the last ship you sailed was probably the pickle and the next stronger ship needs too many crew to sail. You need to see this from the new player perspective.

The Nbrig is the strongest 6th ship I think. But is slower too. From a new player perspective, they can win Nbrigs in their brigs too, the outcome is not sure.

Missions needs to be looked by devs maybe, but they are not a excuse for the ship's rank system.

And from my perspective, the Brig is one of the most fun ships in the game now. Fastest 6th and the best turner too. And Nbrig is the strongest, and with the absence of HRattlesnakes is the basic ship for shallow port battles meta now.

As you can understand, they wouldn't delete a system because John Smith and Manuel Garcia hates a pair of ships.

So you forget the Mercury, in the past the default ship for shallow waters PB, it was better than the NBrig later the Rattlesnake and HRattlesnake was introduced. Mission design is, as mentioned flawed, because as newbie you play 2nd Lt. missions with your 120 men crew. Btw in the past the Snow and the Brig was 120 men and they are now - but now I dont have the freedom of choice I am forced to play the Brig and after that the Snow. If I want to play shallow waters PB I have to go the other tree for Mercury. In the past you had the freedom of choice now you are forced to play ships you dont and you have to grind a dead tree because of PBs. For me it sounds like are sure game killer. Okay Hardcore NA-Fanboys without work and a real life maybe will love this but I have my doubt if 100-200 players on PvP- Europe and maybe 10-20 on the other servers will be enough for a massive multiplayer online game.

[Siegfried]

You can sail with only 2 slots unlocked too, I can't see the game killer here.

[Snoopy]

I think the system is good - and I'm usually against most types of grind:

You can still sail every ship and unlock the most important skill slots so it's not a road block like the "must sail Pavel or else" system we had for a few weeks.
Unlocking more slots is only a marginal increase in fighting potential but provides an incentive for long term players to come back to smaller ships and populate the OW with them.

It's a one-time grind, a progression. Well hopefully, we don't know what happens when they introduce another ship in the middle of the tree.

 

[CoyoteJohn]

This is by far the single dumbest mechanic added to Naval Action to date. Magical bow figures were up there but this one takes the cake.

My main ship is a Pirate Frigate. In order to maximize my knowledge in the Pirate Frigate, I have to unlock the following:

Slot 3 on the Cutter

Slot 3 on the Pickle

Slot 4 on the Brig

Slot 3 on the Snow

Slot 4 on the Cerberus

Slot 3 on the Frigate

I could understand doing a class system, needing so much xp in 7th rates to unlock past slot 3 on 6th rates, so much xp in 6th rates to unlock past slot 3 on 5th rates, etc. But this...forcing me to grind in ships that I absolutely hate (Cutter, Pickle, Cerb) is utterly ridiculous.

It's funny that the only two people advocating this mechanic are testers, while everyone else seems to loathe it.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Elliot Coleman

[Pad Seayew]

My biggest issue with this is it's utterly inscrutable.  

To the point where I don't even care if I unlock anything on any ship, I'm just expecting the powers that be to dump it or fix it eventually. 

My eyes glaze over when I start to read any of these skill tree charts.

[Farrago]

Gaining extensive experience in smaller ships in order to establish expertise in larger ships makes sense for new players. It's just a pain for all of us higher ranking players to go backwards and do it.

Smaller ships should be class based for unlocking... any 7 rate, then any 6th rate, then career progression starts to branch off to a few groups of 5th rates, continuing to branch from there.

But, while the thought of going backwrds and grinding to unlock ships is annoying to me, I don't get why some captains seem to think they must have 5 unlocked slots to be competitive. It's as if they think all opponents are going to be completely unlocked while they only have 2-3 slots. We're all in the same boat.

[Navalus Magnus]

@admin I know that not so many players have joined this thread and written comments for so far, but i really would appreciate if you'd explain your reasons for setting up such an immense grind!

IMO it would still be a grind if you take out 2-3 ships of every tree branch.

What do you say to the suggested changes above!?

[Cmdr RideZ]

WOT like techtree grind does not fit well in a game like this.  In WOT you are just after XP and you really dont lose anything.  In NA you have plenty of other things to do as well.  This is probably even worse than WOT to be honest.

Balance leveling so that you have opened those 5 slots way before you have your next rank.