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Short announcement on the 1.5x BR reinforcement limit


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Hello all. 

We see a lot of commenters who oppose this change (implemented for testing).

 

We would like to issue a statement regarding it.

 

Goals of the 1.5x change

Reason 1. Reduce ganking

This change affects only the following player

  • He sails in a large ganking group looking for smaller groups to sink
  • He can't keep station and sail as an organized group - spreading out to find more targets so they all could gang up on them
  • He wants to join already unbalanced battles (for example he wants to join the 10v1 and make it 11v1)
  • He wants to sit in battle and then jump out and join the instance after their tackler tagged someone on the OW

It will not affect majority of players, especially those who already fight mostly outnumbered.

 

Reason 2. Reinforcements are now positional. You can sail further from the swords and enter from another side - spawning at some distance ahead of the enemy - replicating reinforcements coming from another side. If 1.5x was not added ganks would be a lot worse. There will be no chance to escape. Commenters opposing 1.5x do not think about this (yet).

 

Our goal is to protect interests of an average player. They are silent and only read the forums; not speaking up much. We are their voice on this forum. Players who complain about 1.5 are advised to attack enemy fleets of equal size or bigger. 1.5x won't exist when you attack a superior enemy.

 

Finally this change only concerns reinforcing players. Those who are pulled in during attack all get in. So you can still have a 25v1.

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We used to have positional reinforcements.  One person would tag the enemy, then the reinforcements would sail past the swords and join in about the same area as the enemy player, basically right on top of them.  The 1.5BR limit primarily stops that from happening.

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We used to have positional reinforcements.  One person would tag the enemy, then the reinforcements would sail past the swords and join in about the same area as the enemy player, basically right on top of them.  The 1.5BR limit primarily stops that from happening.

 

good old times :)

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I play solo or in very small gangs often so I for one am happy here.

I think those complaining should try things out for a few nights, see how it actually works out then come back and provide feedback instead of just crying at the patch notes.

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Reason 2. Reinforcements are now positional. You can sail further from the swords and enter from another side - spawning at some distance ahead of the enemy - replicating reinforcements coming from another side. If 1.5x was not added ganks would be a lot worse. There will be no chance to escape. Commenters opposing 1.5x do not think about this (yet).

 

 

 

I suppose the only niggle I have with this is to do with the fact that OW is in fast forward mode where as battle instance is in real time mode. I think I saw admin say something like 2 mins of OW sailing is 2.4 hours real time sailing.

So for example, say I engage a ship in the OW, I am behind him, chasing him and there's players of his own nation behind me, chasing me.  I enter the battle in the exact same position as we were in the OW, i.e, prey in front of me.  Outside, the players of his nation can sail past us in fast forward mode, and enter the battle ahead of us.

Firstly, this suddenly makes my chance of escape much more difficult, especially if one enters in front of me, and the other enters behind me, with me and my prey stuck in the middle.

Realistically, those ships would never be able to pass us in the first place. Joining the battle they should be trailing behind trying to catch up.

A more realistic (but probably hard to program) way would be that they could enter the battle from the direction they were at relative to the battle when the battle started.

So if battle starts and player is north of the battle, he would join north regardless of where he sailed to in the circle after the battle started.

This would allow the attacking player to make a decision as to whether it's worth attacking based on who is around them and where.  Basically with this new mechanic, you're giving players the ability to join a battle in any position they like, even if they were in a bad position when it started.

 

But as I said, I've not had a chance to try these things out yet so I'll reserve judgment till then.

 

Edited by Long Beard
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I can see why it was done, to prevent a lone ship tagging people and then having all his mates appear from inside another battle or a port and all pile in, I think its a knee jerk reaction in the same way missions were closed to friendlies

I am  worried  because when you sail with any fleet of varied ship sizes there is no way everyone in it would be in the initial circle, when your fleet is chasing after someone it gets strung out, I really dont think its fair if the people at the back get left out no matter what the odds.

Its even worse for the people in bigger ships as they have much less chance to get in because they have a higher BR value ship and a good chance to be left outside.

Edited by Edward the Black
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It sounds to me as if this feature is put in to solve the issues of positional reinforcements, in which case I'd say it's a makeshift solution, at best.

 

Perhaps the battle instances should be completely locked from reinforcement instead? Another option would be to put a very large circle around the battle instance, and when reaching this you get a one-time option to join from this direction (representing the horizon of the battle instance) or decline; this would possibly deal with the potential abuse of positional reinforcement.

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 Another option would be to put a very large circle around the battle instance, and when reaching this you get a one-time option to join from this direction (representing the horizon of the battle instance) or decline; this would possibly deal with the potential abuse of positional reinforcement.

Fantastic idea, especially if circle was invisible so players couldn't just sail round it.  They'd still need to sail to the x hairs to 'join' but would enter depending on the direction they entered the invisible circle. The larger the circle the less ability player would have to sail round it and chose an unrealistic position ahead of the fight.

I've also realised how difficult sailing solo in enemy waters is going to be. You'll have someone tag you, then his mate positioning himself ahead in OW before joining making your escape impossible or very difficult.

 

Kind of makes defensive tagging useless.

We'll see what happens in practice.

Edited by Long Beard
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This is my first forum post. I consider myself the "average player" and you are not my "voice on the forums". Can you please rephrase that in your OP.

 

That being said, i disagree with the new 1.5 BR change.

 

Ganking is PVP. This change is going to hurt OW PVP. Please stop putting restrictions on OW PVP.

 

Using a fast scout to tag an enemy ship is essential for small gang pvp. Now, before you say "tagging wasn't in the age of sail"... teleporting wasn't either.

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This is my first forum post. I consider myself the "average player" and you are not my "voice on the forums". Can you please rephrase that in your OP.

 

That being said, i disagree with the new 1.5 BR change.

 

Ganking is PVP. This change is going to hurt OW PVP. Please stop putting restrictions on OW PVP.

 

Using a fast scout to tag an enemy ship is essential for small gang pvp. Now, before you say "tagging wasn't in the age of sail"... teleporting wasn't either.

 

There is no reason to rephrase the OP.  You may consider yourself average, but you are a single voice compared to the volume of feedback the developers receive through channels other than the forum.

 

Thank you for putting in your thoughts on this change, however.

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Fantastic idea, especially if circle was invisible so players couldn't just sail round it.  They'd still need to sail to the x hairs to 'join' but would enter depending on the direction they entered the invisible circle. The larger the circle the less ability player would have to sail round it and chose an unrealistic position ahead of the fight.

 

You're right, and that's why I didn't suggest using a normal size, like the usual tagging-circle. Perhaps your suggestion of a reinforcement-position depending on the relative position at the start of the engagement would work best.

 

EDIT: Damned, you edited your inital comment and now I can't retrieve the quote... ^^

Edited by Niels Terkildsen
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Using a fast scout to tag an enemy ship is essential for small gang pvp. Now, before you say "tagging wasn't in the age of sail"... teleporting wasn't either.

So why do you insist on teleporting a whole fleet into the instance with your tagger?

 

I'm not sure how else to describe the mechanic of the attacking fleet travelling at 20 km/minute while the victim is completely immobile in the instance.

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This is my first forum post. I consider myself the "average player" and you are not my "voice on the forums". Can you please rephrase that in your OP.

 

That being said, i disagree with the new 1.5 BR change.

 

Ganking is PVP. This change is going to hurt OW PVP. Please stop putting restrictions on OW PVP.

 

Using a fast scout to tag an enemy ship is essential for small gang pvp. Now, before you say "tagging wasn't in the age of sail"... teleporting wasn't either.

It will hurt open world ganking, but not PvP. If I want to pvp I go and PvP. I don't care about rules. I still find my prey and kill it. Gankers, griefers and other trouble causing crowd will need to find a new way to play. 

 

In the end, you can't call yourself a pvper if you can't think ahead and find a way out of problem that is facing you. 

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I really dont think this will prevent ganking.

 

The positional mechanic for joining will make ganking that much easier.

 

Small boat tags whatever.  Larger boat sails past target and joins.  Target now has no way of escaping.

 

 

Defensive tagging no longer a thing.   Successful ganks increase.

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This is my first forum post. I consider myself the "average player" and you are not my "voice on the forums". Can you please rephrase that in your OP.

 

That being said, i disagree with the new 1.5 BR change.

 

Ganking is PVP. This change is going to hurt OW PVP. Please stop putting restrictions on OW PVP.

 

Using a fast scout to tag an enemy ship is essential for small gang pvp. Now, before you say "tagging wasn't in the age of sail"... teleporting wasn't either.

It will hurt the gankers, it will not hurt anyone but them as its sole purpose is to stop large numbers picking on small numbers as that is killing pvp far quicker than a patch released a few hours ago. You like to gank we get it. Good luck trying to win with only .5x the br, you can still gank just not as heavy as it was..

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I suppose the only niggle I have with this is to do with the fact that OW is in fast forward mode where as battle instance is in real time mode. I think I saw admin say something like 2 mins of OW sailing is 2.4 hours real time sailing.

So for example, say I engage a ship in the OW, I am behind him, chasing him and there's players of his own nation behind me, chasing me.  I enter the battle in the exact same position as we were in the OW, i.e, prey in front of me.  Outside, the players of his nation can sail past us in fast forward mode, and enter the battle ahead of us.

Firstly, this suddenly makes my chance of escape much more difficult, especially if one enters in front of me, and the other enters behind me, with me and my prey stuck in the middle.

Realistically, those ships would never be able to pass us in the first place. Joining the battle they should be trailing behind trying to catch up.

A more realistic (but probably hard to program) way would be that they could enter the battle from the direction they were at relative to the battle when the battle started.

So if battle starts and player is north of the battle, he would join north regardless of where he sailed to in the circle after the battle started.

This would allow the attacking player to make a decision as to whether it's worth attacking based on who is around them and where.  Basically with this new mechanic, you're giving players the ability to join a battle in any position they like, even if they were in a bad position when it started.

 

But as I said, I've not had a chance to try these things out yet so I'll reserve judgment till then.

 

 

This can be compensated for by increasing distance penalty for reinforcements proportionate to time elapsed since the instance was created (including the initial 30 secs).  Want to join on the other side, then that 1 min or more of extra sailing time is going to cost you a bunch of distance in the instance (and would make it almost impossible to trade a poor lee position for a good wind position).  In most cases if you are late it would be better to join the moment you reach reinforcement range.  And since you have to sail all the way through the circle before you can join from the other side, this would automatically handle the situation you describe.  To make this explicit, the active instance circle on the OW could just grow constantly until closing at 2 min, which would catch people trying to sail through the circle to get to the other side and prevent them from entering.

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I really dont think this will prevent ganking.

 

The positional mechanic for joining will make ganking that much easier.

 

Small boat tags whatever.  Larger boat sails past target and joins.  Target now has no way of escaping.

 

 

Defensive tagging no longer a thing.   Successful ganks increase.

You can kill both if you know what you are doing. 1 good broadside and small ship is a history. Reinforcing sails would be a good idea, since it is always a main target on your ship. 

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It seems quite a few of us would like a more realistic relationship between the OW and the battle instances (which would also very much limit the possibility for abusive behaviour) - what we (read "I") don't want is restrictions upon an unrealistic mechanic.

 

Maturin is quite right when he's pointing out the huge discrepancies and the ridiculousness of the comparative sailing in the instance and in the OW.

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You can kill both if you know what you are doing. 1 good broadside and small ship is a history. Reinforcing sails would be a good idea, since it is always a main target on your ship. 

Sounds good on paper.

 

Melt my snow in your 3rd by the time the 9 other snows who can now join the battle under the BR limit get to the fight.

 

I actively attack 3rds in my snow solo.  Knowing that i can hit one and only friendlies are going to join just made my life a whole lot easier.

 

 

 

Previously in game you had to get good wind on an opponent who is quick to ensure you will catch them in battle.

Now all i have to do is hit them as soon as I'm in range and my buddies can sail past the battle and join on the other side.

 

No longer is it a hopless tag with not chance of catching the prey.  All i did was suspend the prey in space and time and let my buddies get better wind.

Edited by Babble
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One quick suggestion would be - once reinforcement touches the edge of the circle message appears (Join Battle or Decline). Player picks Decline(he touched circle at wrong angle). Boom - After that there will be no more chances to reinforce for that player. Some other player can try the same at better angle and Accept to reinforce. So, touching circle will be critical. No need to sail through it and position at right angle, the moment you touch it that is it. How you touch the circle is up to you. 

 

Battle position/spawn is based on how you touch the edge of the circle. This is more fun and will require more time and skill in fast paced situations. 

 

Devs please take note. 

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