Nerf all Mods to promote NA

[Jack Jones]

I love this game.

BUT I believe that the mods and knowledge trees in NA while excellent in principal are slowly killing the game.

Remember the days of mass battles and tight escapes, lone hunting and feeling that you might just beat those two gankers?

The gulf between players is far to wide. A new player to middle casual player who gets a full broadside in on a modded  ship will see hardly damage caused and cannot compete with its speed, maneuverability etc. Add to this the skill of the other player and its never been harder to learn and grow in NA.

When i started early 2016, I used to grab any ship I could afford and sail out of Kingston right into the 'Sorry' fleet was camped there. I would sail in rough circles and would fire furiously thinking I was great and would see damage inflicted. I usually sank in about five minutes BUT I FELT LIKE I COULD DO SOMETHING!

Now........A good player in a modded ship will shred and sink an average player in no time and the average player will hardy do any damage at all and feel like its all a bit hopeless.

Before anyone says they should get better blah blah blah,...... I am talking about people who have partners, children, jobs and lives and 1 account. The bread and butter of NA, not the dark room, pizza eating, 3 alt account crowd, who's main achievement in life is being an NA captain.

So,

I propose that all mods be nerfed to 1% max. 

Knowledge skills similarly.

More DLC ships of all sizes.

More DLC packs of visuals, role play type stuff.

Crafted ships to have random bonuses to allow flavour but not so much as to unbalance a fight.

Much more PVE content.

This would mean that manual sailing, shot selection, ammo tactics, type of ship to style of play, repairs etc would again become the most important thing, not which clan you are in and how modded your ship is.

This would allow for great battles again and allow more players to compete in an ever shrinking player base of uber elites.

Remember the days of mass battles and tight escapes, lone hunting and feeling that you might just beat those two gankers? lets bring back those hopeful times.

[Gregory Rainsborough]

I look forward to sniping people's masts constantly and boarding them. That's how this would work out.

"Remember the days of mass battles and tight escapes, lone hunting and feeling that you might just beat those two gankers?"

Nothing has changed, I still experience that.

[Liq]

23 minutes ago, Flash Jack said:

I am talking about people who have partners, children, jobs and lives and 1 account. The bread and butter of NA, not the dark room, pizza eating, 3 alt account crowd, who's main achievement in life is being an NA captain.

1.5 years ago that would have triggered me - because guilty :p

But thank god I found out. there is more in life. Still playing but nowhere as excessively as I used to

Now back to topic, I agree that the "elite" upgrades you can only get through pve drops (small chance) are too much. But the regular craftable ones seem fine to me (northern carpenter, french rig, bow figures, ...),  but I feel like each upgrade could use another 1-2 ports spawning the resource needed to craft them.

I think we will be seeing a general upgrade overhaul soon though, where you have to pick a buff from an upgrade pool for each section. E.g. gunnery, either reload or accuracy or pen. Value. Can only have one of it. Admin made a post on that a while ago but I cant find thread at the moment.

[Hethwill]

Most upgrades in games range in effect from 0,01% to 1% for best epiczorz versions.

 

[Slim McSauce]

Wood types from Fir to Live Oak should be compressed. We always talk about mods but the point variation that you can get from a light wood to a heavy one is so extreme it can completely change the class of the ship you're sailing in some respect, and if you have the right books and mods you can overboost a particular stat, you can't balance on those extremes.

Thinking back on NA Legends. All ships being pretty much the same oak, being much closer to their base stats, balance was good. No 15knt ships or anything silly, fights were good and all you needed was 1 repair each and you'd still get 45 minute battles.

Just following closer to NA legends balance would be fixed across the board because you'd again be able to tweak the base stats of the ships and that would follow through more when it's not being overshadowed by a bazillion mods and books.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[Bluetooth]

1 hour ago, Gregory Rainsborough said:

I look forward to sniping people's masts constantly and boarding them. That's how this would work out.

"Remember the days of mass battles and tight escapes, lone hunting and feeling that you might just beat those two gankers?"

Nothing has changed, I still experience that.

This game is bigger than one person and what you experience and what you would do. It's about the game growing and becoming a long term release.

With your skill and mods and clan connections and knowledge of the game you would find it hard to lose to any more casual player. And let's be sure about this. No casual players = no NA.

[z4ys]

1 hour ago, Liq said:

1.5 years ago that would have triggered me - because guilty 😛

But thank god I found out. there is more in life. Still playing but nowhere as excessively as I used to

Now back to topic, I agree that the "elite" upgrades you can only get through pve drops (small chance) are too much. But the regular craftable ones seem fine to me (northern carpenter, french rig, bow figures, ...),  but I feel like each upgrade could use another 1-2 ports spawning the resource needed to craft them.

I think we will be seeing a general upgrade overhaul soon though, where you have to pick a buff from an upgrade pool for each section. E.g. gunnery, either reload or accuracy or pen. Value. Can only have one of it. Admin made a post on that a while ago but I cant find thread at the moment.

On 7/10/2018 at 10:41 AM, admin said:

Upgrades and books are being revamped. This change will get in with the port UI update. 

• All books and Upgrades will be split into logical groups, based on their use. 
• Player will only be able to install / use 1 upgrade from the group. 
• Bonuses will be readjusted and harmonized

On 7/10/2018 at 10:59 AM, admin said:

One group of upgrades give too much bonuses to the base stat
Another group of upgrades give meaningless bonuses to the base stat. 

Harmonization will do the following
Abstract example (numbers are for the illustration purposes only).
If you can buff reload by 30% you should be able to buff penetration by 30% as well, to give a meaningful choice between reload and penetration. 
If you can buff repairs by 30% you should be able to buff HP or Thickness by 30% instead. 

On 7/10/2018 at 11:37 AM, admin said:

 Hard choices in upgrades and setup. If you want to upgrade guns you have to pick one, reload or ammo or sights etc, but all of those choices will be good (given you get the right upgrades from drops or from admiralty). 
 

[Sir Loorkon]

I like your idea of DLCˋs but I completely dislike the overpowered DLC ships we actually have. I understand that the game has to earn money for the developers but they have to decide witch way they want to go. If they continue with those OP DLC ships, this will be a P2W game. I read a post where admin said that it will not be possibe so stack upgrades. Maybe this will solve the problems caused by upgrades. Also some of the basic upgrades seem to be pretty useless. It would be a good thing to reballance all the upgrades. The worst upgrade atm ist the pirat rig refit combined with the Requien (enables the Requien to run 15,5 kn on nearly every course).

[Gregory Rainsborough]

15 minutes ago, Crow said:

This game is bigger than one person and what you experience and what you would do. It's about the game growing and becoming a long term release.

With your skill and mods and clan connections and knowledge of the game you would find it hard to lose to any more casual player. And let's be sure about this. No casual players = no NA.

Oh I've died to casuals, no-one is invincible in this game. A wood comparison chart in-game would help a lot of players I think rather than changing what the wood types do.

[Guest]

Not having mods isnt going to help newbs. Skilled players will just demast more often and out play newbs harder.

Mods can be beneficial to carebears and newbs as the wealthy pvers can have easier access to good mods.

This gets argued often and the end result is always that ship customizing is priority. We dont want bland ships that dont have 'builds' we can theorycraft and try to death.

[Slim McSauce]

19 minutes ago, Flinch said:

Not having mods isnt going to help newbs. Skilled players will just demast more often and out play newbs harder.

Mods can be beneficial to carebears and newbs as the wealthy pvers can have easier access to good mods.

This gets argued often and the end result is always that ship customizing is priority. We dont want bland ships that dont have 'builds' we can theorycraft and try to death.

It's not to help newbs, it's to make the game balanced. You can have wood types, and mods and not have people sailing broken 15.5 knt ships or impenetrable hulls. Most of the "builds" are just pushing the mods meta mods to get a huge % bonus to a ships speed/health. How do you think we get infamous builds like the Bellona, Wasa, and now requem? Because you can buff the speed of these ships to the game limit, and retain lots of health and firepower which cuts the need for frigates.

Now if wood types were compressed, as in fir grants less speed but takes away less health, and LO gives less thickness but takes away less speed, making the positive/negative wood attributes less prevalent, then you have a more conform class of ship that doesn't jump and bite the role of other ships. If the most you could buff speed after woods and mods was 10%, people would use frigates and corvettes, because their base stats for speed and acceleration are higher which makes sense because in what other department can a smaller, weaker ship compete other than manueverability?

Same with large ships, if you could only buff thickness 10% people would use large ships for their high base health. There would be no such thing as a 15knt bellona. If you want a 15 knt ship you get it in a small, weak package. That's balance. What's not balance is a teak/wo bellona modded out running at 14.5knts dishing 800pds of broadside while a frigate built in fir/fir is doing 13.5knts with a third of the health and half the broadside. 
 

Edited July 17, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[Ortac]

Squeezing ship upgrades and skill books to a point where they become negligible and immaterial, effectively eliminates one of the games' core ladder components. This I suspect is the case on the PVE server. Naval Action's limited content is not going to be served well if you reduce part of this content to a level where it becomes pointless to achieve.

[Slim McSauce]

19 minutes ago, Ortac said:

Squeezing ship upgrades and skill books to a point where they become negligible and immaterial, effectively eliminates one of the games' core ladder components. This I suspect is the case on the PVE server. Naval Action's limited content is not going to be served well if you reduce part of this content to a level where it becomes pointless to achieve.

The ship builds in game are not something to be proud of. I would rather ships be limited to 10% performance from base stats then continue seeing battles fought by the same meta ship builds. At least then each ship would be unique and not be fed through the mod blender turned into hyper ships.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[Jack Jones]

44 minutes ago, Sir Loorkon said:

I like your idea of DLCˋs but I completely dislike the overpowered DLC ships we actually have. I understand that the game has to earn money for the developers but they have to decide witch way they want to go. If they continue with those OP DLC ships, this will be a P2W game. I read a post where admin said that it will not be possibe so stack upgrades. Maybe this will solve the problems caused by upgrades. Also some of the basic upgrades seem to be pretty useless. It would be a good thing to reballance all the upgrades. The worst upgrade atm ist the pirat rig refit combined with the Requien (enables the Requien to run 15,5 kn on nearly every course).

The DLC ships are fine without mods and they give the casual player a decent ships for low input into the game. (in reality its these people we need, the dippers if you will.)

The Xebec is a bugger to sail and is hard to stop and sinks like a stone if hit right. Just don't play its game.

The Hercules is a bit OP I agree but not to the point of being invincible.

However its the stackable mods which totally skew these ships and others. Without those stacks balance would be about learning to to sail and hard choices of speed or toughness or fire power but not all three.

Example:

Pirates could not shoot for shit, they relied on speed, fear and boarding. So light, fast ships with lots of crew.

English navy were renowned for fire power. so reload mods and good shooting.

Neither had should have both to excess.

As for mods that give a better bonus to one ship design over another, if you use a universal 'mod fits any ship system' then mods will perform better on certain ships. (That's just life).

Pirate refit is great for xebec, lynx, privateer.........actual pirate ships.

[Jack Jones]

47 minutes ago, Flinch said:

Not having mods isnt going to help newbs. Skilled players will just demast more often and out play newbs harder.

Mods can be beneficial to carebears and newbs as the wealthy pvers can have easier access to good mods.

This gets argued often and the end result is always that ship customizing is priority. We dont want bland ships that dont have 'builds' we can theorycraft and try to death.

Where did anyone say no mods?

Where did anyone say no builds?

why would wealthy PVEers want pvp mods?

[Jack Jones]

2 hours ago, Hethwill said:

Most upgrades in games range in effect from 0,01% to 1% for best epiczorz versions.

 

I agree, Mods like this would add flavour and not unbalance the game.

[Jean Ribault]

#RemoveALLmods   #RemoveALLmods   #RemoveALLmods

[Jack Jones]

2 hours ago, Liq said:

1.5 years ago that would have triggered me - because guilty 😛

Thats how you got so good Liq. 😉

[Teutonic]

I was going to make a thread about the sail force mods but @z4ys reminded me that the Admin already has plans to rebalance mods, so I figure I'll just let it go and see what changes.

In any event I do not believe nerfing all mods will get the job done.

Some mods/books need to be nerfed
Some mods/books need a little adjustment
Some mods/books need to be buffed

Edited July 17, 2018 by Teutonic

[z4ys]

14 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

 

Some mods/books need to be nerfed
Some mods/books need a little adjustment
Some mods/books need to be buffed

Some need to go

[Teutonic]

Just now, z4ys said:

Some need to go

I also agree there

[jodgi]

11 hours ago, Ortac said:

Squeezing ship upgrades and skill books to a point where they become negligible and immaterial, effectively eliminates one of the games' core ladder components.

In a game like NA where the fighting itself is the core of cores and of top shelf quality; Your other content and ladders or customization is of far less importance. IMO anyway.

You can enjoy your enchanted two-handed sword of epic destruction (+120%) in other games where they don't take pride in their PvP fighting mechanics.

[Capn Rocko]

Get rid of Elite Pirate/Spanish refits and I think you will find more balance. The normal versions are fine and I don't think every upgrade needs an "elite" version. For instance, its probably a good thing we don't have "Elite Copper Plating". Overall, I like the mods and wood types the way they are. I am having fun in the game and enjoy the variety of builds people come up with. 

Edited July 17, 2018 by Capn Rocko

[NethrosDefectus]

10 minutes ago, Capn Rocko said:

Get rid of Elite Pirate/Spanish refits and I think you will find more balance. The normal versions are fine and I don't think every upgrade needs an "elite" version. For instance, its probably a good thing we don't have "Elite Copper Plating". Overall, I like the mods and wood types the way they are. I am having fun in the game and enjoy the variety of builds people come up with. 

Or they could make them function properly, they are meant to change the best angle of sail, NOT actually increase speed in battle to be fair

[Capn Rocko]

1 hour ago, NethrosDefectus said:

Or they could make them function properly, they are meant to change the best angle of sail, NOT actually increase speed in battle to be fair

Or that too. If you want a 15.5 knot ship it should be fir wood IMO