Grind discussion

[admin]

Lets discuss grind. 

A lot of players are saying that the grind is unbearable. Let's talk what is grind in Naval Action - for YOU and how we can address it?

 

[Anolytic]

It should be easier to progress in the grind through PvP. Other than that the grind is quite well balanced right now in my experience. This is not a single player game where you progress to max rank and then you're done with it.

What is missing is a bit more content to balance the grind, as well as make the grind more natural and something you don't really notice you're doing. But I expect that is coming as development progresses.

[Lonar]

Personally i think most of the Grind is ok now. But some of the heavyer frigates need a lot XP wich could be tuned a little bit down, and PVP Rewards arent enough for People who want to play PVP only.

[Fellvred]

It'd be great if a new player could viable 'grind' through purely PvP. Perhaps bringing back xp (+ gold?) for damage done would help, even if the new player is losing their cutter in most fights?

I haven't played for a little but while the grind through PvE battles seemed pretty balanced there needs to be a much wider range of content to allow lvling through the ranks.

 

[Koltes]

I don't think much needs to be changed in terms of grind.

We got our way that you don' t have to sail other ships to grind specific ships and its GREAT!
The ship production is affordable, but not meaningless - PERFECT!
Long sails is what kills hardcore OW. To get a fight we have to sail a long long hours vs actual fights.
Reducing price on Outposts and allowing us to have more outsposts is making teleporting affordable.
Also Intro trade winds (just deep water areas that allows to cover huge sea areas faster (long way away from land). This will assist in relocating, but keeps everyone on the water.

As @Anolytic said give us more payout for PVPing and also let us score kills on PVP Leaderboard while keeping the ships (for PVPers its the only income they have - ships capture, but then they dont get the standings).
 

Other than that its nothing over the top in comparison to other games.
Once thing though captured AI ships should not be anywhere near as what players crafting. Make wood types RNG (even if they get good once once in  awhile is ok), but only give them 1 perma mod and 2 skill slots. Thats it. This will make making money through crafting still viable option

[Guest]

Making gold - Not grindy -  Several paths to do it, overall less enjoyable paths tend to balance out by becoming less competitive and more profitable.

Leveling up - No valuable input. - Max rank since the wipe.

Ship Knowledge - Grindy -  Like the idea of having to pick and choose what ships you commit to. But at the moment, whenever I want to learn a new ship, having to do the ship knowledge grind for 3 or so slots to feel like it's worth the risk of sailing a crafted ship and being useful completely puts me off. Only one path - PvE mission grinding, the experience points you get from PvP is laughable, PvPing in bad ships isn't much fun, and fighting in smaller ships than you're used to just for ship knowledge feels a bit wonky.

Combat Marks - Somewhat Grindy - Instead of a spread of various things to collect, it's now quite easy to collect everything needed to craft a dozen ships, but the one thing holding you back is having to get the marks. Which, again, is pretty much only viable through PvE mission grinding, and unlike upgrades (below) it's a slow and steady progression just to get enough of them for a permit or upgrade. At least they can be bought, so there's a way around it, and it does act well as a limiter for larger ships, so I can understand if the other aspects of ship-crafting aren't touched since it's easier to balance it based on a single "currency".

Upgrades - Not grindy - While others seem to hate the RNG I quite like it, sometimes you get lucky and get refits and upgrades worth boatloads even if you're just sinking a cutter or capping a trader's brig. Probably the more exciting part of PvE missions is what upgrades you'd might be lucky and get. Grinding to get a particular upgrade is a bit silly, so naturally those who try to do that would find it grindy.

Edited July 31, 2017 by Guest

[Mamen]

7 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

It should be easier to progress in the grind through PvP. Other than that the grind is quite well balanced right now in my experience. This is not a single player game where you progress to max rank and then you're done with it.

What is missing is a bit more content to balance the grind, as well as make the grind more natural and something you don't really notice you're doing. But I expect that is coming as development progresses.

I agree that grind should be hard as it is... this is part of gamplay challange. As for grind through PVP I think that grind progress should be higher only in Port Battles, other than that should be as hard as it is. To skirmish PVP I would add just random perma upgrade drop from sinked ship. PVP should not be mostly about earning xp or gold in my opinion... its about causing damage and crippling enemies economy ...or just getting new booaat and marks

[mikawa]

The difference between NA and most other MMO's is that you can lose your ship. So the grind is partly necessary. I welcome very much the ability to capture ships up to 5th grade so you can "always" sail out in smaller vessels now. This relevates much of the grinding aspect. Thanks very much for that.

Considering ships xp knowledge -- It would be good to have the travel XP added to ship XP. It doesn't hurt anybody and gives a slight reward to OW travel. The progress is quite ok I think, you can learn in smaller ships faster and any effort for 1st rates is now up to the top players. That is ok for mee too, I don't need to sail out in SOLs.

Considering loot -- I recently observed that basic cutter missions give better loot than frigate missions -- was that a random case or is it true? Then this should be adjusted.

Considering money -- money is a bit short, but okay -- you have to find new ways (and there are a lot of chances to make money).

Considering marks -- It's a heavy effort to collect 200 marks in small ships, this could be lowered a bit.

[Rebrall]

How about instead of making the grind easier in pvp but rather re structure the way you earn xp in pvp based on the actions of the battle eg boarding gives you x amount of xp and gold,

and sinking a ship give x amount, damage to sails, crew kills, hull damage, even maybe xp on how long the battle last's it doesn't have to be huge amount but all the factors of the battle could be pooled into xp earned and gold,  also give the loser some thing so it doesn't demoralise  people form doing pvp (merely just a bunch of suggestion's), doing these things could encourage more OW sailing and pvp. I personally don't think there is a grind at the end of the day you make your own fun in the game, if you choose to pve don't complain about it you chose to do it. Maybe the amount of xp to unlock knowledge are maybe a little high but honestly i still don't mind pushing myself to unlock them. 

[Havelock]

Basically, i can just copy pasta my post from the development roadmap thread:

On 3.7.2017 at 0:36 PM, Havelock said:

• Drastically increase PvP rewards / decrease PvE rewards.
• Relieve us of the current ship knowledge PvE grind. Proposal: Bring back the old honour kill system. A kill 75% of your BR or higher grants a honour kill. First 2 slots all kills count, next 2 slots only PvP, last slot only conquest. Steps could be 5/10/15/20/25 (big ships will naturally level slower as you use them less).
• Increase the availability of ressources needed for upgrades. Currently perm mods are worth more than ships again, which is against your desired design goal.

My experience with the ship knowledge grind:

- started with the small ships when we had to unlock them one after another
- went with Basic Cutter > Pickle > Brig > Snow > Cerberus > Frigate
- 7th and 6th rates were still kinda fun (at least for the first 3 Slots), i gained them pretty fast and i think it was a nice mechanic for new players to get in touch with multiple ships
- starting at 5th rates, the missions became annoying. They are naturally slower PLUS i needed more XP, and theyre always the same.
- then you removed the chain. First thing i did was getting my Victory up. Completely stopped grinding after seeing that the 2nd slot required almost 40k. Lol no!
- from there on, i only bothered to unlock the first slot so i could take at least one most important upgrade with me. Not have been doing PvE since, with some occasional exceptions:
- 1) when i hadnt enough time left to go on another PvP cruise 2) for hostility 3) to unlock slots on Mercury for PBs 4) to unlock slots in the Snow because it didnt require much and is a nice hunter
- Ships sitting at 1 slot (all other not mentioned 0): Surprise, Santa Cecilia (yes, i didnt even grind this one...), Indefatigable, Endymion, Constitution, Agamemnon, Bellona, Victory

 

How i see the problem:

You decided to develop a hardcore PvP game with last patch, and moved NA Legends to a new game. But your design should have also included cutting all PvE content from the game. That doesnt have to mean remove all AIs, but for example coastguard AIs could be ships send on duty from players to report enemies. Then enemy nations would have to come and sink YOUR AI in YOUR waters, not do missions in capital safe zone. Naturally, players would send more ships on patrol where they live, and if an enemy is spotted, sail there to protect his patrols (or even tp to them? he bought the ships and took the risk to lose them, so why not?). My thougts are getting a bit out of hand here tho.

 

TL;DR:

You made up your thougt between an arena based game and an OW hardcore game, but before you dont make your mind up about PvP vs PvE content balancing will be almost impossible between these two target audiences. You cant please both at the same time.

 

Havelock

[z4ys]

- Everything that can only be obtained through pve only is grind for me. And there are a lot of items out their that can only obtained through that.

[Reward PvP more it should always be more rewarding to pvp as to pve]

 

- That NA favors: more guns = more everything (loot, money, etc.) Is forcing player to go for the biggest ship as fast as possible which leads to grinding

[loot and money should depend of BR difference group and personal BR the higher the difference the more rewarding the loot]

A brig vs a surprise should have the same reward as trinc vs coni. (for example)

 

- The Perma mod system = while parts are monopolized by a few you have to kill AI for refits (fault in contract system)

[Ditch perma mods  make them knowledge/ dont allow contracts on certain goods]

 

- Pre last hotfix I could sell my captured player ships. Now they droped in value because they arent playermade anymore. Therefore I have to kill AI to get money again.

[make the difference between playermade and AI capture bigger]

Edited July 31, 2017 by z4ys

[Liq]

Maybe tweak XP for knowledge slots for lineships a little bit, but other than that it's not really that much of a grind IMO... I don't have the mindset of "be as rich as possible" anymore - Before the Wipe I spent a ton of time gathering gold, had up to 850 mil in the end - What for? Nothing lol. I barely ever used any of it. Giant waste of time when looking back. Now I just make as much gold as I need. Usually sitting on about 500k - 1mil.  That's more than enough for my privateering playstyle.
Ships are cheap to craft now. I've lost three ships in the last few weeks but could replace them pretty easily. Also stopped bothering about getting all the good and rare speed upgrades which used to sell for millions - figured crafting a new ship whenever I lose one comes out cheaper.

EDIT:
Though I don't like the PvE RNG only upgrade / skillbook drops. For quite a few upgrades you need materials you can only get through grinding PvE. Dislike.

Edited July 31, 2017 by Liquicity

[Sir Texas Sir]

The two big issues I have if that many folks have mention you fixed the Marks prob with PvE vs PvP but you didn't fix the problem that you hardly get any xp or gold for your PvP.  Not to mention the fact you have to share it with every one in the group or you get nothing.  I still think we should go back to XP for damage so that the little player that did a lot of sail damage and helped still gets rewarded even if he didn't get an assist or kill.  This will also give you a little something if you die in a fight.  Cause it should be a learning experience even if you loose.  

I noticed when we get stuck doing a lot of PvP/RvR my econ gets slacked and I'm not making any money cause the PvP pay outs are just so slow and you only get it for assist and kills.  I think Marks should remain this way along with gold, but gold needs to be bumped up and xp should be for damage done over all through the fight.

Why are all the random book drops and uncraftable mods only through PvE?  There should be loot drop chance reward in PvP too.   Why do we get no rewards now for a Port Battle victory.  If a bunch of guys do all the RvR and win the map, the rest of the nation that did nothing gets the rewards too.  Port battle victory needs a reward like something simple as Pain Chest.  Nothing game balance breaking just something to show these guys did that hard work.  This could of been a good reward for PvP Leader board too.

[Kanay]

22 minutes ago, rediii said:

What I consider bad grind atm is that you only get shipknowledge by pve. You get allmost nothing with pvp because many times you want to board your enemy and not destroy the ship. I play mostly on ships with 1 slot open and dont bother about the rest.

I dont play any pve and you get allmost no experience even from portbattles so with the current system even if I do multiple pvp battles a day I will probably never even reach the 4th knowledge on a 5th rate and the 2nd on lineships is very far away and not possible I guess. (with only pvp playstyle)

Gold is ok in my oppinion. Maybe give more with pvp.

Also pve should be rethought. Many complain if they get ganked so in my oppinion missions should be changed in 2 ways.

Secure missions= in safe zone, open for allies but close after 3 min for enemys. Low reward in exp and gold

Risk missions = more rewarding but will spawn far away on the border to another nation. maybe even in enemy territory.

Not much time to post stuff but will just react to the last part of this quoted post :

Some new players told me that sailing time was too high, after speaking a bit with them they weren't speaking  of the usual sailing time we do for trading or going to a another port , they were directly referring to sailing time needed to go and come back from pve missions. Taking missions in KPR sending them to the other side of Jamaica and spending 3 times more time sailing than doing the mission itself.

I tried myself and asked some missions in KPR, they ended on the other side of Jamaica, with some just in front of what is now pirates ports, just in front of Saint Ann, tried to cancel them a few times to get something closer and still getting them on the other side of the Jamaica after a dozen of missions picked up ( with the boring process of multiples clicks and checks needed that could be reduced btw ) , after 15 or so tries i got something closer, but still quite far for simple short missions ... I don't think it is the same for all Nations as the Brit capital location is particular but in the case of Jamaica one can spend 30+ minutes sailing to go and back from a mission with decent winds to spend barely 15 mn in the battle itself plus getting mission right in front of the enemies ports... Now i understand why some complain about traveling times when it comes to pve missions, spending up to 40mn if unlucky with winds to get and back from a single pve mission is insane compared to what we had before.

 

Edited July 31, 2017 by Kanay

[HachiRoku]

More pvp rewards is usless since there is no pvp anymore. Look at the pvp leaderboards. It is sad. Before wipe there was 160 people online and i had none stop pvp. 600 players now and nothing. This is Slightly of topic but long sails is a kind of grind and time consuming. Ive tryed fighting against every nation since wipe and the open sea pvp is dead. Some of my clan mates sail 4 hours a day for no pvp at all. People mission in greenzone and have no need for sailing. I thought this was pvp server and not carebear server. You attack danes and sweds and there are towers every 1 km in battle. You plan to upgrade to unity 5 but there will be no naval action player base by then. I know im harsh but the feeling of this game dying is very sad for me. I love it to much to quit like alot of the best pvpers have. Dont forget one thing guys. Alot of you think the grind of ships is ok but i see your names and see hardcore players. Focus on casuals to get a player base 

[troody]

1 hour ago, admin said:

Lets discuss grind. 

A lot of players are saying that the grind is unbearable. Let's talk what is grind in Naval Action - for YOU and how we can address it?

 

finally! grind is horrible! ppl doing it, get ganked all the time. exp needed for the slots are way too much. maybe relate the slots to the players rank and make the ranks a bit (not 300%!!!) harder to reach. make them buyable, relate them to pvp.

just do anything about it! it demotivates alot of my clanmates.

and btw. fix the fact that u nearly dont get any exp for pvp! pvp should be rewarded with exp!!!

[admin]

12 minutes ago, Kanay said:

. Now i understand why some complain about traveling times when it comes to pve missions, spending up to 40mn if unlucky with winds to get and back from a single pve mission is insane compared to what we had before.

 

what it was like before? Missions positions and distances have not changed. OW speed increased by a lot as well. 

[z4ys]

5 minutes ago, admin said:

what it was like before? Missions positions and distances have not changed. OW speed increased by a lot as well. 

I dont know how mission spawn is generated. Maybe beeline is still the same but the actually sailing distance is much more because you have to go around an island.

Could be just a porblem of certain ports.

Edited July 31, 2017 by z4ys

[mikawa]

two more things to consider about grind:

-> give XP & gold & marks depending on damage (crew/sails/hull) and strengthen all participants on the battle. Small ships can play a important role but were atm not rewarded

-> consider rewards for all OW actions - sailing should give ship XP and marks for crossing enemy waters -- this would encourage people to sail out instead of hiding.

[Sir Bacon]

Combat Missions
I can have 3 missions total, but I have to select one at a time. Click > Scroll to rank > hit Ok > repeat. 

Missions are a random distance from port. Some are closer than others thus more desirable to reduce sail time to get to them. If the combat mission is far or awkwardly placed I cancel and repeat above.

This process could be more friendly for the player. One example, if I am in port A I generate 3 missions with one click & the missions are near port A, not nearby ports B,C,D, etc. 

[Thonys]

3 hours ago, admin said:

Lets discuss grind. 

A lot of players are saying that the grind is unbearable. Let's talk what is grind in Naval Action - for YOU and how we can address it?

 

@admin

options:

if you serparate the pvp (rewarded points) from the ship building  (and make ship building a stand alone mechanic in NA)  the grind for building ships as a dedicated ship builder would not be that grindy (pve part)

the rewards for doing pvp should in my eyes be,  upgrades stuff (from the ship you attack) loot..

therefore you make a fundamental change in the reward system, [and you don't need the marks system at all] (well maybe in the micro environment for premium ships)

this idea is a complete overhaul, i know,.. but it is a system that can work for the grind..in the current state

in the mean time , i don't like the combat marks system because it is attached to the  ship building ship grind (it holds back the pve player)(( it stops the pve player ,playing the game because his intention for going into a fight are different))

also for the current combat marks the rewards for doing a 2 fights (2) whole evening , and get 13 combat marks(and 18000 gold)[[and a lost battle]] is just too low for having  2 battles from 22.00 hours until 01.30 (than the reward system  is a grindy one) if you need 350 cm for a big ship or 200 or (150 ../13=14 days battle for a permit and hypothetical you lose ships to ..o.0 ...so it's better even not to play).you loose more than you win,,,, that's also what happens with new captains (one of the game breakers for new captains)

so my recommendation is to separate the ship building from the current pvp doctrine

 

Edited July 31, 2017 by Thonys

[Ronald Speirs]

Personally i hate where the grind has gone to in game, more time is spent trying to get stupid books and experience to unlock slots on a ship, plus its made modules a rip off again, surely there are far better ways of doing it or making it better that people can have more of a equal playing field without and extensive grind to get to a level where they feel comfortable to head out and PvP.

The game is hardly fun these days with the amount of grinding to get anything, why cant modules be alot easier to craft and obtain, surely more people would be buying and prepared to go out fighting without having to worry about how hard it is to get modules again, POTBS i thought did it well, modules were easy enough to come by and they were in shops everywhere that u could just buy again and head back out, this game just doesn't seem to get things right and people get tired of the boring slow processes this game has implemented.

[Kanay]

1 hour ago, admin said:

what it was like before? Missions positions and distances have not changed. OW speed increased by a lot as well.

Back in the days when doing missions taken from KPR they spawned way closer than what i got now when trying them, and unless my memory is becoming bad at some point didn't we also had the choice to select them more or less closer ( maybe depending the level of the mission, i can't recall exactly , will have to dig for infos on this ) which was a nice option especially for those not having long play times, unless i am mistaken and memory getting old maybe , what is sure if that when i was doing missions around KPR long time ago to level up, all my missions were closer than what i seems to get now for sure.

Since global is down I went to pvp1 server, first mission i picked , lvl M&C, they can go further away on the west of St Ann too for what i could test :

In global Saint Ann is now a Pirate owned city which will make it worse having missions just in front of enemies owned ports..

Here unless you really time out to start with a good wind that will turn a bit when passing the corner you have to take 2 different and opposite directions and will most probably have bad wind for half the trip when going and also coming back, same when it's around Port Antonio, or between St Ann to Port Antonio, or if you pick mission from Carlisle ending near Montego Bay, the result is that many of the Missions taken from KPR end in a long sailing trip for a short battle mission, when i tried this i had to select and cancel maybe 15 mission to get something south from KPR taking not as much sailing time.

I believe the missions spawns location for British Capital is a bit different than many other Capitals due to it being an island, like said by someone else above I hear some speaking about missions in green zones,  probably a nice option for some Nations,  this isn't possible for Brits due to the extremely tiny green zone present around the capital and the topography of this port.

I believe that this is a long and painful process for low level players that stick to GB capital and try to level up there, plus comes location of GB on the map... being the biggest hunting ground in the servers usually, all this making it worse of course. After having discussed with a couple of low level players and understanding that them complains about traveling times were concerning the time spent trying to level up i can perfectly understand them, both had not gone further away from Jamaica than visiting Pedro Cay island located a bit south from it , not done trading long trips or anything else, just doing missions that ended in a very boring process due to the very long times taken to go and get back to the missions.


 

Edit: in case it matters, lowest level midshipman missions  :

Had to cancel and take back again many times to get some with smaller travel times south of KPR ( not even half safe tho, in the area most hunters are lurking around for preys )



 

Edited July 31, 2017 by Kanay

[Stilgar]

As far as money reward in PVE missions is concerned, it is just fine. I also like that how pve missions are scaled up with ship level / rank. Besides, capturing traders can give a handsome income. So, do not fix what is not broken. 

I have issues with extent of knowledge slot grind. I like the idea, for it encourages sailing a ship for a bit to learn how it handles. However, opening slots is a debilitating exercise atm and is time sink even for pvp players (who want their ships to be best prepared for PvP), if even one can combine it with money grinding. I feel players spend too much time in pve largely due to knowledge slot grind and not money grind. As I said idea is good and encourages sailing a ship for a while, but XP requirements should be drastically reduced. XP corresponding to sinking of smth like 10-15 ships of approx same BR should be enough. If technically possible, I would suggest introducing loss of knowledge slot if player is sunk in a given ship. That would add a bit of dynamics to the whole knowledge slot mechanics.

As a final rinal remark, adding rewards to PvP that accelerate grind is bad idea imho. That would encourage "killing everything that moves" and "seal clubbing" just to grind faster. Thrill of a good battle, captured ships, extra combat marks and perhaps a bit better cash provides handsome rewards for PvP already (with this said, improved combat mark reward would not hurt).

 

[Daguse]

The only issue I have is with travel time. I get a few hours a day, 2-3 depending on how well the kids sleep.  So to be able to relocate to where the action is can sometimes take up the entirety of my play time. 

It would be nice to see trade winds and currents added, something to drastically shorten the travel time. Adding a speed buff similar to the invisibility buff, while inside these "Highways" would be a great solution. Players would have charted paths to move ships and trade around, and PVP would focus on these areas.To top it all off, while most of the current head in one direction, the trade winds head in the opposite.