Patch 9.97 - Events, minor crafting changes and other things

[Hugh Latham]

13 minutes ago, la Touche-Treville said:

Definitely like the speed increase in OW. Some people appreciate the fact of turning on NA, setting a route that will take anywhere between 30mn and an hour or more, ALT-TAB into some other game or distraction and checking now and again the progress. I personally found that very boring and a real time sink delivering no game pleasure. I think this tweak isn't the ultimate answer but at least makes that part of the game less painful.

Why don't you just teleport your ship using a mission?

15 minutes ago, la Touche-Treville said:

As for crafting, Fine Woods sounded like a good idea initially but at the end, it killed crafting. I am level 50 and since the introduction of fine woods, I haven't crafted a single ship.

For a lot of players, crafting is a solid part of their game experience. Craft an exceptional ship and go measure it against other players.
With Fine Woods, crafting exceptional ships has been reduced to a clan activity. And if a lone crafter can't access that level of ship, then what's the point of crafting a simple, say Surprise, that is going to be outmatched immediately by every other Fine Bermuda Cedar, speed fitting, agile Surprise he'll meet out in OW for PVP?

At the end of the day, I would prefer this game to be back at that 2000 online level we experienced early this year with loads of casual players and being able to measure myself by sailing and shooting skills rather than 400 hardcore players that all invest massive time in game to ensure they are fitted with the very best ship for each occasion.

I don't know what I do differently, but I crafted 6 exceptional ships since the fine wood was implemented. I felt it needed better balance with the standard wood production. As a crafter I found it satisfying to supply my clan mates with special ships using different woods and regional bonuses to meet their needs.

[Vaan De Vries]

19 minutes ago, la Touche-Treville said:

As for crafting, Fine Woods sounded like a good idea initially but at the end, it killed crafting. I am level 50 and since the introduction of fine woods, I haven't crafted a single ship.

For a lot of players, crafting is a solid part of their game experience. Craft an exceptional ship and go measure it against other players.
With Fine Woods, crafting exceptional ships has been reduced to a clan activity. And if a lone crafter can't access that level of ship, then what's the point of crafting a simple, say Surprise, that is going to be outmatched immediately by every other Fine Bermuda Cedar, speed fitting, agile Surprise he'll meet out in OW for PVP?

Sorry, but you are writing lies. 

I am lone player and was able to craft plenty of except ships. If you are lazy enough to go and ONCE setup an outpost with fine woods - don't blame the game. 

With deliveries between free towns gathering fine woods was easy and completely risk-free task. 

[Potemkin]

9 minutes ago, Vaan De Vries said:

Sorry, but you are writing lies. 

I am lone player and was able to craft plenty of except ships. If you are lazy enough to go and ONCE setup an outpost with fine woods - don't blame the game. 

With deliveries between free towns gathering fine woods was easy and completely risk-free task. 

This 100%. the only drawback to being able to craft on your own was the fact that you needed to use most of your outposts for resource procurement instead of pvp OPs, assuming you didnt have the money to just buy what you needed on the market. I guess the flip side to this argument revolves around the fact that not all nations, much less lone players, had easy access to the raw materials and i would assume that might affect ones outlook on the subject.

Edited December 6, 2016 by Potemkin

[la Touche-Treville]

Writing lies? How can you say that? Please re read what I wrote: I haven't crafted ....

I know people thathave but I know many more that have left the game. Nuff said

[EL LOCO]

Removing Fine woods was a huge mistake.   I think the better solution was to increase output rate and no compass wood.

Now there is absolutely no reason to secure a map sector .   Now there will be more ships and there is no more attrition.  That 1st rate you just made with fine live oak felt rare and you were worried in port battles.  Now I can build one every day.     No more use of buildings.  No reason now.  

 

Bad bad patch.  Worst patch ever.   I suggested OW speed increase by 10% not 20%...that is bad too.     Worst patch ever.  Not selling my fine woods yet as I think they should be implemented again.

[Duncan McFail]

After tonight's patch we'll see fine wood but prices drop to one quarter where it was and then let the flamefest begin?

[Koltes]

Either PVP event bug or Signaling Perk bug.

It says that people will be able to join until BR is somewhat equal.
According to this screen Maximillion has jumped in to this battle and BR was well over for GB/US players. Was good battle though

[Dumu]

I seriously think that this game is going into the absolutely wrong direction. You are making the game more casual, which is not what keeps players in the game. Ships need to be expendable, and biggest ships need to be very rare. Atm there is nothing epic in santisima, you can see 10 of those around any harbor. Those playing for thousands of hours need to get something unique for their ships to show others (cosmetical things, they already have so huge skill advance over newbs), would love to see permanent names for crafted ships. Remove the absolutely stupid gps location from map and add a tool that if you stay on place for 3 mins you can calculate rough position every 2 hours or so (if you get lost in sea you have a way to recover). For RvR the old flag system would've been completely fine with few tweaks. Add a tool to form fleets in game for easier fleet play. And most importantly remove the ridiculous amount of AI ships from OW map.

[Koltes]

Re: Speed increase in OW.

Cross thoughts here. Being a OW traveler myself it is easy to welcome this feature... however. It makes life of a pirate even harder. Unreasonably harder.

I think its a good idea but came a bit too soon.

Prior increasing speed make in battle sail mirrored in OW.

This will make ships in open world have different speeds. Right now the speed difference between two same or similar types of ships is no way near in balance with the speed of ships in OW. Means trying to catch someone is nearly impossibly in OW even if in battle your speed is 2-3 knots faster. Please remove speed increase or balance speed differences according to ship built and setup;


 

[Zoky]

As I suspected increasing OW speed is doing massive damage to OW PvP. Last night I was in PvP event area and by the time I catch enemy player we left the area. And I dare you to go to danish/swedish/french part of map because it was bad before but now its impossible to get someone unless he/she is afk or braindead.

And one more thing about PvP events: they are broken! During the PvP event in shallows I seen maybe 3 non-pirate players and got bored to tears. So then one of mine clan members sailed his brit alt to area and I killed alt. And surprise, surprise i got on leaderboard! I predict swift dead of PvP events if nothing change.

And then there is ROE which is broken beyond belief. While in PvP event area one of the pirates tagged someone and I was in second circle while rest of pirates were outside even second circle and when battle started they joined and spawned maybe 200m from middle while I spawned in middle of nothing  This way people will actively try to be outside of second pull circle because it only penalize you. Currently its better to be nowhere near the battle and then join later then to be in second pull circle or even on edge of first pull circle. Fix this ASAP!!!

Edited December 6, 2016 by Zoky

[Todbringer]

All the changes sound very very good. Can't wait to test them this weekend.

What i see in this patch is a big improvement for crafting and pvp.

With the fine woods gone I can finally free at least 4 or 5 of my outposts and move them to free towns in contested zones for some pvp (hopefully some fleet on fleet action - don't like 1 vs 1 much, takes too long and it's too boring).

Can't wait for them to rework blueprints with Academy building or research or reverse-engineering or something similar.

Also, faster OW means I'll finally dare to go all overt he map to open outposts in several key places all over the map for that pvp. Also we'll be able to cover more area in shorther time. And occasional transport of goods will not be such a chore anymore.

As for attack timers and OW speed, tbh I don't care much for it since I'm not in habit to gank players' traders. But since I think I'll love new signalling perk since it could allow us for some multiship pvp as others pile in, I think trader ganking near ports shouldn't be allowed to die off completely.

But I say give it a few days to see how will all the new stuff work before you start whining and complaining.

EDIT: as for those wanting more realism, I think the game is beginning to be nicely balanced between those that want more realism (those probably already lobby for Steam to make game controllers shaped like ropes and fuses for this game) and those that want to play a game more casually and don't have that much time to spend on it.

Since casual players most likely outnumber real hard core players, more casual approach and less time sink could attract larger playerbase, provided it is balanced with some realism so it does not get completely dumbed down like Warcraft got (from all those talents and spells in vanilla WoW they are almost down to one large button that says "Press here to do everything").

 

 

Edited December 6, 2016 by Todbringer

[Wigermo]

my ships is still on tow after maintenance/update

[Duncan McFail]

7 minutes ago, Zoky said:

As I suspected increasing OW speed is doing massive damage to OW PvP. Last night I was in PvP event area and by the time I catch enemy player we left the area. And I dare you to go to danish/swedish/french part of map because it was bad before but now its impossible to get someone unless he/she is afk or braindead.

And one more thing about PvP events: they are broken! During the PvP event in shallows I seen maybe 3 non-pirate players and got bored to tears. So then one of mine clan members sailed his brit alt to area and I killed alt. And surprise, surprise i got on leaderboard! I predict swift dead of PvP events if nothing change.

And then there is ROE which is broken beyond belief. While in PvP event area one of the pirates tagged someone and I was in second circle while rest of pirates were outside even second circle and when battle started they joined and spawned maybe 200m from middle while I spawned in middle of nothing  This way people will actively try to be outside of second pull circle because it only penalize you. Currently its better to be nowhere near the battle and then join later then to be in second pull circle or even on edge of first pull circle. Fix this ASAP!!!

Alright man. The OW speed has nothing to do with this. It's increased across the boards. I like it. We have a lot more travel with regional bonuses and newer trade goods involved. Definitely a plus. Kudos devs. 

The problem is the attack circle being too small along with the pull circle being too large. They did this to alleviate problems with instantly closed battles and teammates being outside the older smaller circle. The reasoning is a more fair fight. Before we had a tagger get a good tag and the slower ships appeared right on top of him if they weren't dragged in. Ships at the edge of the circle would have worse positioning than the reinforcements. That system was unrealistic and faired gank squads. This can be fixed by having the original attack circle, opening battles up for a few minutes, and placing reinforcements farther away depending on the time they entered. 

I agree on the pvp event. It's just going to be teams with the biggest numbers that end up on the boards. They need some quick and easy action that tests a players skill. Lobbied fights based on BR would fix this. It would be blind so no farming alts during the event. No travelling long distances to be frustrated. Put the action back into Naval Action. I like the OW for hitting traders and fighting unbalanced fights, but not a competition of skill. I can kill any yank on PvP2 1v1, but not having to play the numbers game. 

[The Spud]

I think this is a good patch:

- No longer realy needed to hold a region for extended periods to get fine woods.

- Regions get less important, so we can increase the rate at which they can be capped. More port battles, more PVP.

- We can continue to toss ships at eachother in endless amounts, and get back to enjoying the battles we have been deprived off for the last month.

Also for players starting out in the game it was very hard to make progress on the field of crafting, I would say almost impossible with the amount of money you need to invest in outposts and productions buildings, and the time needed to sail around. Its good to keep the new players motivated.
 

This patch will need a couple of days to see its full effect, I predict it'll bring more reward for the efforts people do.

[Tenakha Kan]

Towing is awesome, THX!!

[Guest]

Feels like a quite meagre patch - PvE events are quite dull and largely depend on how dumb the AI decides to act (rinse and repeat), PvP events are okay but mostly so only because of how barebone its design is than anything else, signaling is broken, the fine wood sales has made ships as disposable as ever, inflated the economy to even more ridiculous levels and removed yet another purpose for RvR (which is critical now that hostility is back on track), and land in PBs is delayed yet again.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Aegir said:

the fine wood sales [...] inflated the economy to even more ridiculous levels

What you say? Inflation? Where? In only earned 150 mil. by selling my fine woods yesterday  

At least there is currently no more need to do boring trade runs

 

But joke aside, in overall you're damn right, Sir!

 

Edited December 6, 2016 by Guest

[Jean LaPointe]

22 hours ago, Hodo said:

I am not a fan of the flat out drop of fine woods.   But I am glad to see them listen.  

I think fine woods could have been used in a positive way in crafting.  But now we will see the mass return of the 1st rate navies and nothing less.   Nothing more fun then seeing fleets of 1st rates because why build anything less. 

I think fine woods should have been used for Ships of the line 3rd rate and higher.  As they would need better materials to build as they are larger.   But meh... I guess it is back to Ship of the Lines for everyone! (eye roll)

Fine woods affected every ship building project, and in a major way that was too disabling. It took over two and a half weeks of harvesting fir to get the amount of fine fir for an exceptional  Surprise. I never made the required amount of fine fir before I maxed out with the collection of fir. I have enough first in the warehouse to make tar until the cows come home.

It isn't just the building of first rates but all ships were affected. I, for one am glad to see the suspension of the fine woods. For the very short time fine woods were implemented, I had been unable to complete any ship building project greater than common. So I quit building ships, it was too frustrating to attempt to build even for my desires let alone a contracted build. I went trading instead, if you wanted a ship, my feeling was go buy one from the AI, its cheaper and isnt anything different than i can supply. I feeling was this ship building facility is closed. This has all changed with the removal of the fine woods for ship building.

I am glad to see fine woods suspended for the time being.

[Wolfram Harms]

Maybe it's only just the grey winter mode, why I feel little to none energy to play NA much recently?

But it feels to me, I am also missing incentives or stimuli.
Something to drive me to do something.
The chasing after FINE wood, or the chance of getting a PAINT were such stimuli.

My latest such stimulus had been the gathering of enough FINE wood for my newly awoken ship building desire.
I wanted to craft several versions of the same ship type, to evaluate the various wood types plus build perks
and regional build boni.

I had just collected enough of each FINE MAHOGANY, FINE TEAK and FINE OAK to really start building.
And then I read the patch note: FINE woods not required anymore.

I sold it all yesterday evening.
Now I feel somewhat empty.
What should I touch next, to raise my spirit?
And how long will it last, before it will be wiped out again?

I know this is a BETA, and a BETA means changes - I proclaimed that myself to other complaining players before.
But right now it feels to me, as if all new initiatives are getting choked in their early states.

Or maybe it is, as I said at the beginning - just a grey winter mood...

 

PS: I like that new SIGNAL perk - it gives us something back, that was really good to have.
Maybe it should be fully implemented in a way, and not use up one of the OFFICER perk slots?

Edited December 6, 2016 by Olham

[Alanxo]

I used to play Trader, which is no more stupid than anything else and allows my guild to be safe from vulgar little financial worries.

This patch poses a small problem to me, by the fact that it constitutes a significant reduction of the possibilities of escape of a merchant ship.

-The increase in open sea speed results in a decrease in the detection time of a hunting vessel because the percentage of speed difference is the same, the relative approach speed is increased as well, and 20% less time to react and take a escape headind.

- The suppression of the coward perk, favors the bad hunters, whatever the qualities of the hunted, because it leaves the hunted ship longer exposed to the shots of the hunter.

Also, I am surprised to see that professional hunters are asking for a reduction of AIs and coastal fortifications on the pretext that the increase in speed would allow traders to take refuge more quickly. Not totally false, but also a decrease in tag time, the only time the trader can react and position his vessel properly.

These people should bluntly ask that the mere fact of seeing a trader is enough to obtain his surrender because, obviously, it is not the hunt they like, but the capture and easy appropriation, without risk.

What I suggest:

-The increase in speed: although our sailboats now look more like outboards in open sea, I will not return on this point since it seems to satisfy a hurry majority.

-The decrease in the number of military AIs: I fully agree. They are so numerous in some aspects that it becomes difficult to distinguish a hostile vessel.

-The decrease of fortifications: I am also in agreement but I will add a request for more realistic placement of fortifications. For the regional capitals, 2 forts near the port and 4 towers for protection of approaches and, for lambda ports, 1 single fort and 2 towers for all.

- Abolition of the coward perk : Agreed, also, but by bringing a tactical possibility to the merchant ship in combat, the possibility of throwing all or part of its cargo into the sea, bringing the modulation of its speed according to its loading. More than 2/3 gives the current speed, less than half gives ½ additional knot, empty gives 1 additional knot.
This would leave the merchant the choice between trying to save his cargo or his ship. To prohibit a trader from getting rid of his cargo, just before the boarding, it is enough to apply the timing affected, before, to coward. 30 seconds without gunshot, allows the trader to throw to the sea what he wants.

- The decrease in tag time: I am totally opposed because for the trader who will, mathematically, more often surprised, it is the time needed to adopt his defense strategy.

Finally I wish that the differences in the quality of ships affecting speed, taking into account the possible perks, could be more marked in open sea and really proportional to what they are in fight.

 

Alanxo Old Trader

Edited December 6, 2016 by Alanxo

[Busterbloodvessel]

There was another update today (6th Dec)... any idea what has been changed.

Buster.

Taps around with blind Pugh's stick.

 

[The Spud]

11 minutes ago, Busterbloodvessel said:

There was another update today (6th Dec)... any idea what has been changed.

Buster.

Taps around with blind Pugh's stick.

 

I'm guessing either a tune of the fine wood prices or a tuning of the events (Like they used to do a small update for every special event).

 

[Konali89]

I believe the signaling perk got fixed in todays patch.

[Pada]

So there is a exploit with the new signal perk? When everyone in the join circle presses join at the same time everyone gets in?

[Sir Texas Sir]

44 minutes ago, Pada said:

So there is a exploit with the new signal perk? When everyone in the join circle presses join at the same time everyone gets in?

No it's more like one guy has it and than it stays open for a little bit and not until BR is close.  We had a fight that was 3 vs 6 and had two more out side just showing up.   Only one was able to get in to make it 4 vs 6.   There was over 100 BR difference and it was shallow water so one ship wasn't going to be more than that in BR.   It's not staying open until BR is closer matched it seems or it's only stay open randomly or something.   I only used it that one time though so didn't play with it much.  Though there might be issues where they can do as you said.