Hotfix for patch 9.97: Land in port battles

[TommyShelby]

8 minutes ago, koltes said:

If you want the PVP guys to come back and triple server numbers you need to change the mindset around OW and PB.
OW is an opportunistic PVP area. Its ok to gang or to be ganged or chased. Make it possible to catch fast, have fast decent fights, great rewards for killing but also great rewards for risking and trading. This will bring life back to open waters. No timers, or at least make them 30 min timers so anyone can join the battle instance. This is much more fair for the trader to get help and for the pirate trying to avoid being ganged in his hunt. Again brings thrill and danger.
 

I agree. 
Ganking should be allowed and well, it is allowed. 

However, there should be some kind of incentive for doing relatively fair PvP instead of ganking. (That means, still allow ganking but make it so more people would want to do relatively fair fights instead of ganking stuff.) 

[Galt]

9 hours ago, koltes said:

We couldn't not get to ANY of the circles before they got 1000 points

You couldn't make it because everyone was in a first rate and you started the fight with the wind in your face. Where you start in the battle and how the wind blows are all factors now that you ignored, and it cost you the fight. we won because we had faster ships that could make it to the circles before you could, because we had perfect wind. Lesson #1 - don't bring all first rates and expect to get very far (for PBs.) #2 - analyze the OW to determine the best time and place to join the battle.

Be that as it may, I do feel that points could stand a nerf. I think they accumulate a bit too quick. 

[Puchu]

Things that are harder to do need to be more rewarding than things that are easy to do. 

That counts for mast sniping vs chaining, 
That counts for raking vs hullbashing.
That counts for ganking vs even fights.

It's basic game design. There allways need to be things that are harder to do than what you just did and they allways need to be more rewarding.

[DeRuyter]

5 hours ago, admin said:

Each section

the change was done based on some active pvp players feedback, but the current feeling that it might be overdone taking into account reinforced masts bonuses. 

Thank you for your response. I was thinking about mast sections because watching the tournament fights you usually only see the whole mast fall and not the top mast or t'gallant mast. You should see the top sections coming down more often especially in line fights at longer ranges.

4 hours ago, Wind said:

Demasting is still a problem and I think 30% is perfect to keep players fighting side to side and not sails all the time. I had a fight in my Consti vs 2 Frigates. I was able to keep them off and enjoyed the fight up until they chewed my sails and fun was over. I had their armor down low, but I had no sails left to operate the 4th rate. This 30% is what I needed to keep fighting, it really works well in gank situations and will help many players. 

You are on the right track and if someone says it's too much I say it's not enough. Gank demasting is what is killing this game, making demast useless what you should do. Players should fight broadside to broadside. On the other hand, Demast in port battles will still work, since incoming damage is 10x heavier. 

Wind - wouldn't this be the same if they just used chain to chew up your sails? Dismasting is a lot harder than simply shooting up sails with chain - especially at carronade range.

1 hour ago, Ellis said:

There is no reason to replace a valid strategy, just because gankers happen to use them. 

Demasting should remain as a valid strategy, it allows you to manage an otherwise bad situation. Purely broadside trading will not work if you are in let's say a 2v1, by having demasting as a tactic it allows you to alter a situation and gives the player more strategic options.

 

1 hour ago, Prater said:

The question shouldn't be "why do you need to demast?"  It should be, "why can't we demast?"  What is so wrong with demasting that it needs to be taken way?  We need to demast because we want to and because most engagements in real life ended up with at least one of the ships demasted.

 

+1  Shooting to disable rigging - not aiming with laser accuracy at a mast mind you, but on the uproll at the rigging which took out control lines, standing rigging and spars was a historic tactic in the age of sail. One has to remember that masts often came down because the standing rigging was shot away not necessarily because it was penetrated by a ball and other types of disabling shot could do this as well.  I am not sure this is modeled directly in game other than by mast HP so some form of dismasting needs to be viable in game.

This tactic should not be nerfed because some players are very good at dismasting (personally I find it hard to dismast a player).

When reading accounts of 1v1 frigate actions you often see both ships suffering a lot of rigging damage so for example a Trinc should be able to damage a Constitution's masts with long guns and certainly vice versa.

[Pagan Pete]

Pagan Pete makes sweet, sweet love to this patch!

 

 

One problem may have cropped up though. Trdeships with fleets in Rookie zone, are now protected from attack by the BR differential… for ships they don't really have.

The other is: I don't see any trade ships.

But again, Bless you fer fix in DD and fer getitn that land in the PB;s! 

Edited December 21, 2016 by Pagan Pete

[Sir Texas Sir]

30 minutes ago, jblynch said:

You couldn't make it because everyone was in a first rate and you started the fight with the wind in your face. Where you start in the battle and how the wind blows are all factors now that you ignored, and it cost you the fight. we won because we had faster ships that could make it to the circles before you could, because we had perfect wind. Lesson #1 - don't bring all first rates and expect to get very far (for PBs.) #2 - analyze the OW to determine the best time and place to join the battle.

Be that as it may, I do feel that points could stand a nerf. I think they accumulate a bit too quick. 

The battle was 21 mins into it and we had 9 mins to get logged in and to the starting point.  Some of us couldn't even get in (that is why they got ganked out side).   IT was a bad mechanic on the devs to not give a heads up warning that there will be a patch so we can arrange better ships.  We came to fight a normal old school port battle not the new one.  That and we had to go against the wind to even get from where we spawned in when the server came back upt.  Don't blame us for the devs doing something stupid.  Not to mention there should never be Port Battles where there is maintenance time.  We can't even get fights during US prime time cause it won't let you.  That is why we had to flip the ports after server comes back up.  You can't have any port  battles after 8pm CST.  So you have to flip by 10pm CST.  Prime time is 8-10 PM and that was when we use to have our port battles.  Now we can't and ya'll keep doing them around 5-6pm when most folks are getting home from work.  Hell West coast players it's 3-4pm so many of them are still at work or school.   The devs need to fix these port battle times for one.  Four two that port battle should been pushed to the next day not half way started when folks where logged in.  If we had not staged our self out side we would never had made it there in time to even do the port battle.   

 

Ya'll did not beat us, bad game mechanics allow ya'll to win.  With what ya'll brought I'm going to bet ya'll prob would of been crushed in a normal port battle on the old system, but that is in the past.  Not like we care any more after this crap most of us aren't returning.  We been trying so hard to get players back and now ya'll got this stupid Top three nations Alliance and won't fight each other.  Have fun with your PvE server.  Cause that is all it is.  I won't even be planing to show up to PvP events cause why should we come when ya'll have no one else to fight?  

[van der Clam]

5 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Becuase some stupid magic perks tells me I can't board you cause I don't have more crew than you?  All it did was make folks use grape more and more.   I beaten many a boards where I was out number by as much as twice my crew (they weren't board fit) so why would that stop me from boarding any one else other than a silly perk. It got to a point every dang ship we came across had that perk on it that we just stopped boarding and just sank folks instead.   Sorry I'm a pirate and I want my price and that is your cargo and your ship maybe, but if I can't board than you can't have it either.   

This one thing is going to make a lot of folks happy and many a PvE/Care-bears sad.  Almost makes up for other things.

 

Oh Pirate Perk got 3% to turning added to that might make folks use it more now.   I still want to know what the other changes to mods, ships and such was.

You speak of magic as tho some perks for rats aren't magic also and as tho it is really difficult for crew to know to cut the f*cking ropes when grappled. Requiring the boarder to have more crew means that I personally have enough crew to defend against being boarded by releasing grapples and cutting the ropes. Once I lost enough crew to not be on grapple defense then I can see enemy being able to board on a whim. But to remove DD is just making it a retard f*cking gank fest all over again for no f*cking reason other than to please f*cking gank squads.

So congrats devs, you played to a minimal group base....yet again.

[Sir Texas Sir]

3 minutes ago, van der Decken said:

You speak of magic as tho some perks for rats aren't magic also and as tho it is really difficult for crew to know to cut the f*cking ropes when grappled. Requiring the boarder to have more crew means that I personally have enough crew to defend against being boarded by releasing grapples and cutting the ropes. Once I lost enough crew to not be on grapple defense then I can see enemy being able to board on a whim. But to remove DD is just making it a retard f*cking gank fest all over again for no f*cking reason other than to please f*cking gank squads.

So congrats devs, you played to a minimal group base....yet again.

You mad bro?  I mean only ganks I been seeing is from your little alliance.  We use boarding to equal the numbers out fast against ya'll.  I'm sorry most of ya'll kinda suck at fighting PvP.  Take some boarding axes and learn to not get caught in the wind or slow down.  You little magic button is just that.  Most ships wasn't full of marines and fighting men that know how to board so a good crew that knows how to will out grappled and pull ships faster than an untranded even more crew ship.  That and those thisp many of the crew should be on the guns or sails if they are not dedicated boarders or marines.

 

Sounds like to me your just a PvE upset your actually going have to learn to fight instead of using magic perks like DD and cowards which have both been removed.  You do know the minimal group is the PvPers that bring the game it's life.  It's the PvErs that are killing this game with there little care bear stuff. I mean you get to now telport with your cargo if you escape.  That has care bear all over it.   Don't even have to be on the open world for long.  Just tag a trader and go off to a friendly port to get you closer to where you want and out of danger.   

Cry me a river and just keep up the QQ I'm sure they will put something back in for you.

[Sea Archer]

After all this discussion about the master thickness, I want to suggest to modify the damage model according to my proposal.

 

[van der Clam]

12 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

You mad bro?  I mean only ganks I been seeing is from your little alliance.  We use boarding to equal the numbers out fast against ya'll.  I'm sorry most of ya'll kinda suck at fighting PvP.  Take some boarding axes and learn to not get caught in the wind or slow down.  You little magic button is just that.  

You call it magic, I call it crew not being oblivious to watching grapples flying toward my ship and thinking, "hrrmmm maybe I should get rid of these." Without DD, now every crew decides to catch them and attach them. So there, the magic is actually in ganker boarders being able to manipulate my crews' brains into being ref*uckingtarded.

And btw, it ain't my alliance. I'd continually vote war with everyone if the devs would give us the option to use our votes as we want. Instead, I get screwed by other nations locking up my nation's votes.

[Puchu]

How does anyone get boarded by a ship that has even crew? 

Boarding someone with even crew is plain suicide for both partys. I have no idea how anyone could ever think of doing something like this. If the enemy has boarding fit and you board it with full crew its a coin toss. Why would anyone ever let a battle get decided by a coin toss? Its ridiculous. You allways need to decrew first in any case. The rageboarding with equal crew is nothing but a troll strategy and relies purely on the hope that the enemy doesnt have boarding mods.

[van der Clam]

Just now, Puchu said:

How does anyone get boarded by a ship that has even crew? 

Boarding someone with even crew is plain suicide for both partys. I have no idea how anyone could ever think of doing something like this. If the enemy has boarding fit and you board it with full crew its a coin toss. Why would anyone ever let a battle get decided by a coin toss? Its ridiculous. You allways need to decrew first in any case. The rageboarding with equal crew is nothing but a troll strategy and relies purely on the hope that the enemy doesnt have boarding mods.

Not everyone has boarding preps with wicked fast ping. It is seriously easy to get pinched by 5 enemy ship after they raped your sails and then board you and one shot kill you if you have lag and they don't. Magic ganks.

[Puchu]

if you get pinched by 5 enemies, you die in any case. dd wouldnt save you

 

[Koltes]

1 hour ago, jblynch said:

You couldn't make it because everyone was in a first rate and you started the fight with the wind in your face. Where you start in the battle and how the wind blows are all factors now that you ignored, and it cost you the fight. we won because we had faster ships that could make it to the circles before you could, because we had perfect wind. Lesson #1 - don't bring all first rates and expect to get very far (for PBs.) #2 - analyze the OW to determine the best time and place to join the battle.

Be that as it may, I do feel that points could stand a nerf. I think they accumulate a bit too quick. 

Yes, apart from server times fk up as said by Texas that made us 30 mins late entering just before port battle was closed , this was LINESHIP port battle. Yes new mechanics wants us to bring smaller faster ships but this is hardly a lineship battle. Does this mean bye bye to 25vs25 1st rates epics? Is that what you telling me? Because I'm telling you that the current PB mechanics killing lineships.

I'm not bitching about this particular PB. We will comeback and adjust taking into account everything. Dont you worry about that.
I'm bitching about the mechanics that essentially turns this PB into the following:

1. Get to PB entry running with the wind
2. Bring at least quarter of fast ships and 1/4 fast 2nd rates and 1/4 4th rates
3. Enter battle and start race contest to first circles.
4. Whoever gets to circles first gets the fight.
5. Repeat process another 2 times or more if necessary.

This is your doomed scenario of every PB now.
Because you can win on cap points only and those 1000 points jumping up way too quick that is whats gonna happen.

They brought land to PB - GREAT! Should have leave it at that.
Why not remove the circles and add 1 stronghold fort. First we have to fight the players who defending and then destroy the fort. Victory condition - Fort has to be destroyed and BR 2/2. Becuase there is a land and nowhere to go defenders will actually fight not run and the attackers press on

Edited December 21, 2016 by koltes

[Duncan McFail]

I like that there's now land in the port battles. I realize the old pb system was a place holder for something much better. There's a lot of good changes that have come in since hostility and many that are bad or need to be reworked.

Building hostility-this was suppose to make pb's take longer to achieve and give nations time to respond. You achieve this by taking AI missions to raise hostility, dropping war supplies, or killing players of that nation in the zone. The biggest problem is many players that pvp do not like having to do AI missions. They want to pvp, but others can completely avoid pvp and still raise/lower hostility. Also when you get a big group together you want to see action right away. Not wait 2 days for a pb. How about making it a blockade. Aggressors can just sit on open world close to a port and it starts gaining hostility. This leaves them vulnerable to being attacked and having their blockade broken. Maybe a notification to the defending nation that the port is being blockaded. This should have a minimum of 6 players to start the blockade. The rate of hostility would be based on number of ships and br. That group of 6 should take around 3 hours of blockading to bring it to a port battle. Maybe 2 hours for a full group of 12, 1.5 hours for 2 full groups, 1 hour for 3 full groups. After aggression peaks a port battle would start instantly. This would be more of a time sink, but players who want action would receive it. Defenders would work to build a force to take down the blockade or wait for the port battle and fight with towers/forts in their favor.

Port battles-the actual land and wind that's in the open world being the same as is the pb is awesome. The zone control I'm not to happy with. It favors the bigger numbers and makes the smaller nations split their forces too much. How about we keep the land and towers/forts and change to a tiered port battle. First stage being deployment where both sides can see the wind. Second being ship to ship combat where the defender tries to keep it's towers/forts alive while fighting with the enemy. Third where the aggressor bombards the port to reduce it's militia and defence. Fourth where troop transports spawn in and must be escorted to a landing zone. The defenders would have to actively try to stop the aggressors instead of kiting aggressors around the map until time runs out.

Open world battles-too many factors favoring defenders right now. Between super small tag circle, instantly closed battles, AI fleets, forts/towers, combat logging, and now teleport to a friendly port pvp is suffering. Tagging should go back to the old single circle. Battles should remain open for at least a few minutes with the spawn range of joining ships farther away based on time entered after intial tag. Lower the size and quantity of AI  fleets. Lower the amount of towers/forts. 5 minutes on post combat screen and you get kicked to open world. No teleport to nearest friendly port. To cut down griefing there's a number of changes that could help. An increasing timer of not being able to be attacked after each unsuccessful combat tag. Wherever you are in a battle when you exit you appear in the same spot on open world when you leave. If a player is disconnected or considered afk his ship should immediately start moving to his best wind away from enemies.

[Young]

• Determined defender perk was removed. If you have DD it is a useless perk now.

Please bring this perk back, boarding is really the least favorite part of this game for me. having DD prevented a lot of the 3 ships pushing you onto irons so they can rage board you. Also i think mast thickness is a little to high will need to test this to confirm it. 

Edited December 21, 2016 by Young

[Sir Texas Sir]

25 minutes ago, Puchu said:

if you get pinched by 5 enemies, you die in any case. dd wouldnt save you

 

Yah normally if you 5 vs 1 your prob screwed any way.  I'm wondering when he ever got ganked too. Cause ever fight i been with him or seen other clan mates been in they had more numbers than we did so it wasn't even a gank.

[van der Clam]

1 minute ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Yah normally if you 5 vs 1 your prob screwed any way.  I'm wondering when he ever got ganked too. Cause ever fight i been with him or seen other clan mates been in they had more numbers than we did so it wasn't even a gank.

Not when I was US Cpt Blackthorne. It never mattered how many ships we showed up in, rats always came with more and larger ships. And as Dutch, we are keeping all fights as close to equal as we can....except the PBs.

[Sir Texas Sir]

3 minutes ago, van der Decken said:

Not when I was US Cpt Blackthorne. It never mattered how many ships we showed up in, rats always came with more and larger ships. And as Dutch, we are keeping all fights as close to equal as we can....except the PBs.

You know ya'll all ways had the numbers, it was NPG that never showed up in proper ships or help out.  We would watch them show up in 4th rates in Line ship battles or bring grey ships to shallow.   Than they wonder why they get sunk.  Than after Port battle they will be out with there 1st rates grinding fleets.  It's not our problem y'all couldn't get organized and roll in fleets or come out and help each other. It's one of the many reason I left the US nation.   The brits are just as bad.  They don't support and help each other.  You dont' know how many times we have tagged a first rate to watch numbers almost twice as ours run and leave the battle and the first rate alone.  That sounds more like you where in a bad nation/clan than a gank issue of boarding.  But you shouldn't have ot worry about that any more you got good old US and Brits to watch ya'lls back.  We all ready know there past track records.  Maybe you won't get ganked in the future with you new nation.

[Puchu]

how does every thread turn into a "you ganked us" thread? 

This thread is about the patch which took away demasting as a skilled part of the game. And one which made going for speed obsolete because tanky ships will now be just as fast as speedy ones.

[Corona Lisa]

On 19.12.2016 at 2:17 PM, admin said:

Other changes

• Some upgrades, perks, regional bonuses increasing ship speed were reduced. 

Can you fix this pls, its not correct. Regional Bonuses didnt change for example.

Edited December 21, 2016 by JonSnowLetsGo

[akd]

On 12/19/2016 at 7:17 AM, admin said:

 

 

• Mast HP was modestly increased (30% on average)

Wait, was mast HP increased or was mast thickness increased?  Scary if a mast thickness increase is being described as "HP" (i.e. life) when it is in fact a force field that acts to completely negate any possibility of damage from many classes of guns and ships. Fundamentally different attributes.

Quote

• Determined defender perk was removed. If you have DD it is a useless perk now.

 

Fine, but then you need to add a simple visual indication of another player's boarding status.  You have ships with invisible crew in game and the UI should compensate for this.  "Blind" determined defender perk was a reasonable balance to "blind" yellow marines and 100% boarding prep, as well as the core imbalance of ping determining boarding outcomes.

(Whistle does not work for a number of reasons.)

Edited December 22, 2016 by akd

[EL LOCO]

On ‎12‎/‎19‎/‎2016 at 6:03 AM, Wind said:

Now all Devs have to do is make sure 1st-2nd rates are rare and hard to build, so we don't get 25 1st rates mess again. 

That's why I liked fine woods.  They need to implement this again.

[Woody051]

A While back i had made a thread to suggest some new mission ideas to the game

 

In this thread some of these missions included structures and even land. I was wondering if now in this patch we could take some of this in consideration not only for content purposes but to enable players a means of playing Mortar Brigs (or defending against them) in PVE. I was hoping to get the playerbase exposure to different battle scenarios as well as different ship layouts in PVE missions so that when it came to PVP mode there was less of a learning curve for the player to undergo.

 

Thoughts?

[Busterbloodvessel]

Another update being loaded today 22/12/16.  Buxom, Beast or Ninja, we shall see.

Buster