Grind discussion

[Obliterati]

I would like to preface this with the fact that i like the ship knowledge idea. It allows players to modify their ships as they see fit and buff it in one direction or another. I'll break down some of the issues with the grind. Which is entirely to much. Part of the problem is that only battle experience is allocated. I encourage the Devs to spend a few hours determining the average battle experience yield and time it takes per mission. Then get a rough idea of how many hours it takes to unlock a full ship to 5 knowledge slots. A small ship will take 3-5 hours to unlock. While i first rate literally takes 60-70+ in game hours of constant grinding. Which is NOT fun. 

7th and 6th rates are perfectly fine where they are. The typical ship takes 3-5k xp to max out. Which is not terrible even though it will take 3-5 hours to do. The reason is because the first 3 slots are unlocked within 30 minutes to an hour. 

5th rates are much more difficult but still not completely broken. I believe the main problem is that the ships the 5th rates typically shoot yield about the same amount of experience that the 6th rates receive. Making the grind significantly longer. Especially when it takes 5 times as much experience as the largest 6th rates. The 5th rates therefore suffer from a grinding issue where leveling one ship to max takes longer than it takes to get from 350 to 650 crew. The primary reason for this is because only battle experience is allocated. You also have to consider the fact that a SINGLE ship takes that long. There are a lot of 5th rates that are used effectively for PVP. Without ship knowledge and only a single durability. People are unlikely to risk those ships. 

4th rates are in a mission sweet spot. Technically they can earn significantly more battle experience per mission than the 5th rates. Since they sink much larger ships. However, the same problem occurs as the 5th rates the grind is significantly longer than it takes to crew up to the next level.

3rd rates don't even have a roll in the game. Why would you spend 30-40 hours in game hard core grinding to level up the ship knowledge slots? Simply put they aren't worth the time when a 2nd rate is faster, does more damage and tanks better.  

2nd rates have a roll in the game but only 1 is worth sailing when you stack them up against each other. Even it takes upwards of 40 hours of constant grinding not counting sailing time to complete.

1st rates several of these ships are worth sailing however, i've yet to find even a single person with more than 2 slots unlocked. The reason is because its entirely to slow. People look at the time it requires and say hello kitty that. They don't even attempt to try. Seriously the total grinding time not counting sailing time to the mission is over 70 hours.   

So to recap. The larger ships all take entirely to long. The max experience requirements are way to high. In fact the  4th to 1st rates should likely be halved. With all experience counting. That way even if you don't do as well as one player and get all the kills. You can still level at a decent rate with the mission experience. 
 

Crafting on the other hand needs a serious pass again. Specifically. Why is the only way to gain experience with crafting building ships? seriously?

[FrostZone]

Sure after 1600+ hours playing the game unlocking knowledge levels PER ship is untenantable.  It feels like I have to level up again, when I spent so much time getting to Rear Admiral.  It feels like the developers lack imagination when creating game content and have resorted to making it a grind fest instead. It is a serious problem when it takes over 40 hours of game play to unlock all the slots on a 2nd rate.

I think it would be better if they fixed the open world tagging system, and worked on improving trade and commerce making the game more customizable and interesting.

[Lordicious]

3 hours ago, The Red Duke said:

What, specifically, in the grind, is unbearable ? Can you expand slightly more ? Many thanks captain.

Personally what stops me from playing or coming back is time required to do things in this game. No matter if it's a mission grind or cargo haul or pvp attempt, all these tasks take too much time. If there was a spawn point that I could sail to and jump to another side of the map and go pvp it would keep me in game. Until you guys repair this issue, I won't be playing much. I don't have 5 hours per day. Also, many recent reviews point to the same issue. People want quick action, but get boring empty ocean sailing and quit. I am surprised Developer did not realized this after so many years, this is the source of all problems and must be rooted out from this game asap. 

Edited August 3, 2017 by Lordicious

[Vernon Merrill]

The more I play the more I realize the "grind" is much more of a player-created mental state than I thought...  Yes, there is an initial 3/4 day grind to get some "seed money" for repairs/crew/cannons...  After that the "grind" is somewhat self-inflicted.

I've been strictly PvP'ing in the redeemable Surprise with only one knowledge slot and a privateer with 2 slots...  With the recent nerfing of mods to "reasonable" levels, there is no need to only bring fully-unlocked ships into OW PvP...

In fact, I now have a nice Connie with some decent permanent upgrades that a Pirate so generously gave up with barely a decent fight...

The best way to deal with the "grind"?  Dont grind.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Vernon Merrill

[Lordicious]

11 minutes ago, Vernon Merrill said:

The more I play the more I realize the "grind" is much more of a player-created mental state than I realized...  Yes, there is an initial 3/4 day grind to get some "seed money" for repairs/crew/cannons...  After that the "grind" is somewhat self-inflicted.

I've been strictly PvP'ing in the redeemable Surprise with only one knowledge slot and a privateer with 2 slots...  With the recent nerfing of mods to "reasonable" levels, there is no need to only bring fully-unlocked ships into OW PvP...

In fact, I now have a nice Connie with some decent permanent upgrades that a Pirate so generously gave up with barely a decent fight...

The best way to deal with the "grind"?  Dont grind.

Once again, 300 pvpers including you won't be able to save this game. You are talking from a different perspective where you only pvp, but not everyone is the same. Developers must focus on casual and pve players else we are in trouble. Eventually even you won't be able to find any fights. I hope they stop ignoring these problems and fix them once and for all.  

The best way to deal with the "grind"?  Don't grind. - Worst suggestion ever as you can't exist without grind in this game as new player. Imho, Vets should stay away from this topic as they don't help with anything new, this topic should only exist for new players who see and experience the real problems. 

Edited August 3, 2017 by Lordicious

[Vernon Merrill]

Lordicious, let me ask you a question....   What is the end-goal of your "grinding"?  What are you trying to achieve?  I'm genuinely curious...

Are you trying to "have fun"?  Are you trying to "become rich in game"?  

Honestly, I'm curious.  

[mikawa]

I think the difference to other MMOs I know is that your motivation is to just *reach* a certain goal in game.

Get a very special armour.

Collect gold for an item in auction house.

Learn a special ability.

After the grind you can be sure that you *own* this item, this ability.

 

In NA this is partly the same but only partly: Skill books, okay. Learn them and own them. Ship XP. Gather them and *own* them. Okay.

But: wanna have a rare upgrade. Or must buy or harvest resources for repairs. Or wanna craft a dream ship. Sail out & grind PvE Missions. Okay. But these are items that can be taken away in a blink of an eye. Just run into an enemy raider and lose all. Then begin again to gather something you've already had. I think this is the most frustrating part especially for new players.

[Vernon Merrill]

I agree Mikawa...  that's why many of us advocated for an "officer-based" mod system and fully-craftable upgrades. 

I guessmy point was that if you don't let yourself become beholden to "mods", then chasing after them seems less frustrating.  

[jacob van heemskerk]

 

 

 

i agree whit Obliterati and FrostZone PVP is what makes this game for me, fun, getting to that goal means a bit of grinding, but the idea of grinding each ship, is not a bad one, but right now it takes just to much of a effort getting those slots to unlock  what i want see more of in this game is the pve aspect of the game. why not be able to send your own ai fleets to trade whit ports ? that will make trading more interesting less boring , and hunting down those fleets fun to, naturally, you can only adjust your fleet in ports whit a outpost, and not change its direction or destination, while its "under way" and you will only get a message that your fleet is under attack, you cant control the fight, but the battle will be "open" to join no restrictions on joining the fight. and when your fleet gets to the destination, it can only buy and sell if you don't  have a outpost at that port.   

Edited August 3, 2017 by jacob van heemskerk

[Ronald Speirs]

POTBS had a better idea then Knowledge slots, yes there was book but it gave u multiple craft-able upgrades and no restrictions other then class/ level of ship, they wern't expensive to obtain the book and there was that many upgrades crafted and located around the map that people could go in and get when ever they liked, not having only a few day to sell things, it was a supply and demand system and even just upgrade to sell and test, you could customize ur ship how ever u see fit and it have positive and negatives, you need more upgrades with drawbacks as well as positives, if there were more positives then they were at a smaller percentage, if they had good positives they had worse drawbacks, atleast it was about to deal and customize how we played our vessels, the game lacks proper ideas and purpose and only invent no way on making this worse, keep it simple and quicker and easier not more and more grinding and less people wanting to play and do that, there are more games out there that reward player quicker and are much more enjoyable, time to relax and make things easier and more enjoyable that players want to go pvp and trash ships and have fun otherwise why do we play for the grind and boring non content we have atm?

[Doug Maoz]

I have ground up several ships to test the system out and get seed money, here are my thoughts. Some of this was done pre-knowledge tree removal, or I would never have ground the brig and cerb.

7th Rates are in a good place, anyone can grab one and become proficient in a day with some missioning. Not much to say here.

6th rates are also pretty good, it doesn't take forever to get the first 3 slots unlocked, and the others can be done with some small dedication.

5th rates are not so good. The cerb, frig, surprise, and pirate frigate all took me forever to get to two slots, and I did not bother with three on most of them. Pirate frig I have 4 since I love that ship <3. The rate at which you can earn xp vs how much it takes is rather broken, especially for the heavy frigates. Requirements should be reduced on these since this should be a very common ship class.

4th rates do pretty well, I can get Agamemnon up to two slots without too much work, but more takes a while. However the xp earn rate vs requirements are not broken like the 5th rates.

3rd rates are hurting. The missions they can do yield 650-1000 xp per, with a 46k requirement for the third slot on Bellona. Even if each mission + sailing was 30 min, that is 23 hours MINIMUM to get it partially unlocked; this is a bit much, perhaps you should be able to grind the 5th slot in 20hrs total?

2nd rates I have not done.

1st rates I looked at the requirements and decided not to bother. I have a clanmate who has all the slots, and it took him days and days and days of hard grinding fleet missions solo.

We need to talk about the philosophy of upgrade slots vs how hard they are to grind. Devs have added tons of cool ship knowledge upgrades, and it saddens me that few get to use them; not to mention we can't test them very well without good access to them. Do you need knowledge slots to be successful? No. But they are good rewards for dedicated players, and I think the payoff should come sooner than it does now.

I think all would agree and say that having 1-2 upgrade slots allows you to fight and grind much faster/more efficiently, so why not give the first slot away free on each ship? As it is, you feel like you are just getting started finally unlocking that first slot. The first three slots should be easier in general, but later ones are OK being harder.

tl;dr 5th rates are hurting and need lower requirements, PVP should be given far more XP than it does now. Perhaps 1st slot should be free on all ships, a la green ships pre-patch. It should be easier overall to grind slots 1-3 so people can create builds they like without working their mouse to the bone.

As a minor note, the limited ship slots make it much harder to grind up a pvp ship, since you will want a tough one for grinding and a different one for OW fights or PBs.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Doug Maoz

[Sang Noir]

If you want to have the best experience for your players, make it easy for them to take a ship, upgrade it, sail somewhere and have a fight. Give them a place where they can buy their stuff cheap and a place to sell it expensive. Give plenty of rewards (titles, sealed bottles, loot, a reputation) and they will be even more happy. Give them things to discover (ruins, treasures, wrecks, secret places) and they will sail around to discover.

Anything you add to that (costly upgrades, costly ships, long distances, less loot, clan politics, nation politics, complicated pre-battle mechanisms), will subtract from that best experience.

best experience = short hours / lots of game

bad experience = long hours / less game

 

[Lannes]

3 hours ago, Jean de la Rochelle said:

If you want to have the best experience for your players, make it easy for them to take a ship, upgrade it, sail somewhere and have a fight. Give them a place where they can buy their stuff cheap and a place to sell it expensive. Give plenty of rewards (titles, sealed bottles, loot, a reputation) and they will be even more happy. Give them things to discover (ruins, treasures, wrecks, secret places) and they will sail around to discover.

Anything you add to that (costly upgrades, costly ships, long distances, less loot, clan politics, nation politics, complicated pre-battle mechanisms), will subtract from that best experience.

best experience = short hours / lots of game

bad experience = long hours / less game

 

I agree. I am reluctant to mention another game because it is ill-mannered, so I apologize in advance. World of Warships makes money hand over fist and has up to 19,000+ players on line. You never lose a ship. It's always back in port after a battle. I have eight ships waiting to play with. There are constant contests and missions and what-not. It's like being at the Mad Hatter's tea party. Pvp is continuous. You could play it for free from beginning to end, but I, like many others, got drawn into buying ships and accelerating progress through the ship tiers (from I to X) by buying doubloons. It's not perfect, and I would love for Naval Action to be interesting again so that I could alternate and play it too. Alas, I may have to wait a long time for this to happen--or maybe never?

Edited August 4, 2017 by Lannes

[Malachy]

I agree the grind is high, and difficulty at low levels is through the roof. I think it should be fairly easy to progress both financially and rank wise to 5th rates and grow more difficult after that. The ship knowledge slots are ridiculous. I'd rather have it back the way it used to be, all slots open. Once you can crew a ship you shouldn't need to grind for weeks just to use it.

[RaimundoJoe]

The grinding is to much and boring, for the 4th and lower rates. 

[Hawkwood]

I am asking myself how the developer team can manage to screw the game 2 times in 6 months.....

A game should be fun, should not be too simple, but not too hard, and the players need to identify themselves with those characters they are playing.

That so hard to code in ?

 

 

[Jester Jake Jackson]

We like to eat cake, we like to eat nuts, 

We can't move our ass, magnificent fats! 

We don't like the gym, all work and no play,

For our validation, we'll grind ships all daaay! 

You're pumping your abs, we're pumping XP,

You're dating them lasses, we sink ships for free! 

When you come back home, and want to set sail,

Why should we be equal? That would really faaail! 

The one who grinds...

The one who grinds...

The one who griiiiinds! 

Should win all the fights! Hooray! 

[Lannes]

15 hours ago, Jester Jake Jackson said:

We like to eat cake, we like to eat nuts, 

We can't move our ass, magnificent fats! 

We don't like the gym, all work and no play,

For our validation, we'll grind ships all daaay! 

You're pumping your abs, we're pumping XP,

You're dating them lasses, we sink ships for free! 

When you come back home, and want to set sail,

Why should we be equal? That would really faaail! 

The one who grinds...

The one who grinds...

The one who griiiiinds! 

Should win all the fights! Hooray! 

Witty but also sh*tty.

Your addiction does not give you leave to support a game that's become boring to most former players. Nevertheless, I like your ditty.

 

[Skully]

On 8/1/2017 at 8:34 AM, Prater said:

I'm talking about blueprints, specifically 5-7 rates, has nothing to do with 1st rates.  When durabilities were taken away, they didn't divide resource cost by 5, so the cost of ships is significantly more than it used to be.  Before we bought 5 ships, now we buy 1, but the cost isn't that much different.  For small ships it is the same, and for 5th rates, it is maybe 10-40% cheaper, wood being the determining factor.

Aug 21st 2016

Surprise Blueprint
\ XP: 1404
\ Labor: 589
\ Ballast: 25
| \ Gold: 375
\ Blocks: 49
| \ Gold: 245
\ Cables And Howsers: 30
| \ Gold: 3540
\ Canvas Rolls: 10
| \ Gold: 1000
\ Cordage And Oakum: 20
| \ Gold: 1640
\ Iron Fittings: 33
| \ Gold: 8514
\ Medium Carriage: 24
| \ Gold: 20928
\ Planks: 254
| \ Gold: 2540
\ Rigging Parts: 10
| \ Gold: 150
\ Rudder Parts: 22
| \ Gold: 1628
\ Small Carriage: 20
| \ Gold: 7060
\ Tar: 7
| \ Gold: 210
\ Teak Frame Parts: 160
| \ Gold: 4320
\ Wooden Fittings: 79
| \ Gold: 1185
===
Total Gold: 53335
Total Labor: 589

Aug 10th 2017

Surprise Blueprint
\ XP: 1404
\ Labor: 589
\ Blocks: 64
| \ Gold: 3264
\ Cables And Hawsers: 6
| \ Gold: 366
\ Canvas Rolls: 18
| \ Gold: 1908
\ Cordage And Oakum: 36
| \ Gold: 1692
\ Iron Fittings: 7
| \ Gold: 889
\ Medium Carriage: 24
| \ Gold: 3720
\ Provisions: 240
| \ Gold: 8880
\ Rigging Parts: 18
| \ Gold: 2790
\ Rudder Parts: 22
| \ Gold: 1012
\ Small Carriage: 20
| \ Gold: 2280
\ Tar: 7
| \ Gold: 217
\ Teak Frame Parts: 160
| \ Gold: 23360
\ Wooden Fittings: 16
| \ Gold: 240
===
Total Gold: 50618
Total Labor: 589

Why the hell are we still discussing grind and is this not simply fixed?

[Prater]

Doesn't look fixed to me.  1 durability cost 10667 plus labor hours then, now 1 durability costs 50618 plus labor hours.  Let's also mention over 1 mil worth of modules.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Prater

[Hodo]

42 minutes ago, Prater said:

Doesn't look fixed to me.  1 durability cost 10667 plus labor hours then, now 1 durability costs 50618 plus labor hours.  Let's also mention over 1 mil worth of modules.

That is one of the other minor complaints I have had this whole wipe.  They never adjusted the labor, or cost of production of ANYTHING with the reduction of durability.  It doesnt hurt me as bad but it is a pain in the butt for many.

[Pad Seayew]

1 hour ago, Hodo said:

That is one of the other minor complaints I have had this whole wipe.  They never adjusted the labor, or cost of production of ANYTHING with the reduction of durability.  It doesnt hurt me as bad but it is a pain in the butt for many.

That's why I can't play anymore. They promised it would be cheaper with one dura.

[shaeberle84]

43 minutes ago, Pad Seayew said:

That's why I can't play anymore. They promised it would be cheaper with one dura.

You get cheap ships from the NPC, cheap cannons and repairs from PVE missions.

However, the player based economy is so screwed up, you can never ever substain losses in PVP.

[Teutonic]

10 hours ago, Prater said:

Doesn't look fixed to me.  1 durability cost 10667 plus labor hours then, now 1 durability costs 50618 plus labor hours.  Let's also mention over 1 mil worth of modules.

Add on top of Cannons.

before? 1 cannon

now? need as many as the slot needs. On top of labor hours, and resources.

Oh and those repairs? resources, labor hours, time sink.

It's not fixed in the slightest.

I have dealt with the new crafting and it is managable for a player like me who doesn't mind a grind...but I know so many more who logged in day 1 of the wipe patch and in 5 minutes were so disgusted by the changes they have decided to not come back until the release of the game to try it one last time.

I could count a good 20-30 players I know/knew who have decided not to play because of the grind and crafting mess, were they going to play anyway? maybe not, but this could have been prevented.

[Slamz]

7 hours ago, Pad Seayew said:

That's why I can't play anymore. They promised it would be cheaper with one dura.

You can't raise 60k for a Surprise?

I made more money than that just dumping looted medium cannons into sell contracts.

I think this is all psychological and ignores all the easy money we can get from trade goods now, too.

Or from dumping crafted goods into free ports. That's easy money too.