Hotfix 7 for testbed patch 9.99

[Duncan McFail]

53 minutes ago, Davos Seasworth said:

I think this needs a bit more testing before being implemented. The issue is timing. Now I am not saying 46 hours was wonderful. It was too much time between a setting up a port battle and the port battle itself. Ten minutes however is too short. The Swedes recently took Bovenwinds (Oranjestad) and even though Dutch players were on, we were no where in the area to defend the port. Swedes were asking us Dutch to join the port battle in fact. Looking for a good time and to test out the port battles themselves. We did have quite a few players on at that time too but we were all down near our Capital. The ones that did have ships in that area were not getting off work or simply getting on the server till hours later that day. With one dura ships, expensive to build ships, and no towing (which I approve by the way) this is also a drawback to having such a short period of time between the port battle being set up and the port battle itself. This hurts a lot of individuals who wish to participate in port battles yet are not considered and do not consider themselves to be hardcore players, these said casuals are the individuals that tend to make up the foundation of games similar to yours.  There needs to be a period of time long enough for players to get online and to transport a ship to where a port battle is going to take place.

He was referring to after the port battle starts it takes 10 minutes to start gaining points. But what happened to that pb. They got it to 100% a few days before that, but it wasn't showing as a port battle. Then I log in yesterday to see that it was taken. As far as the timing on port battles I agree 46 hours is way too long. Way too long.

[VirtuallyIdiotic]

Just now, Duncan McFail said:

He was referring to after the port battle starts it takes 10 minutes to start gaining points. But what happened to that pb. They got it to 100% a few days before that, but it wasn't showing as a port battle. Then I log in yesterday to see that it was taken. As far as the timing on port battles I agree 46 hours is way too long. Way too long.

That makes more sense. It was around the same time when they regained the 100% on the region and when the port battle opened as well which was where my confusion lied. 

[Remus]

2 hours ago, Duncan McFail said:

He was referring to after the port battle starts it takes 10 minutes to start gaining points. But what happened to that pb. They got it to 100% a few days before that, but it wasn't showing as a port battle. Then I log in yesterday to see that it was taken. As far as the timing on port battles I agree 46 hours is way too long. Way too long.

On Testbed, PB times are 09:00 to 19:00 (iirc) but only when they do maintenance, so most days there can't be port battles.

In build 9.98 PBs were indeed scheduled 10 minutes after contention was raised, but this was surely for testing purposes. I don't know about current patch and have seen nothing to suggest this is intended to go live.

[furyGer]

There was no message after 100% when portbattle will start. But that is perhaps there are no daily maintenances on testbed. 

[Duncan McFail]

22 minutes ago, Remus said:

On Testbed, PB times are 09:00 to 19:00 (iirc) but only when they do maintenance, so most days there can't be port battles.

In build 9.98 PBs were indeed scheduled 10 minutes after contention was raised, but this was surely for testing purposes. I don't know about current patch and have seen nothing to suggest this is intended to go live.

Yeah I noticed that. They had it to 100 at 1500 something. It should have been a pb but it stayed at 100 for the rest of the night at least. 

[victor]

9 hours ago, GreasyMnky said:

I guess it will depend if people go sail in OW, I gather a lot more fish/salt when I go and harrass npc in enemy waters and look for other players than if I were to just go do a mission or two and go back to dock.

I guess you are more on the OS PVP side of the game, correct?

[Teutonic]

9 hours ago, Duncan McFail said:

He was referring to after the port battle starts it takes 10 minutes to start gaining points. But what happened to that pb. They got it to 100% a few days before that, but it wasn't showing as a port battle. Then I log in yesterday to see that it was taken. As far as the timing on port I agree 46 hours is way too long. Way too long.

I would be fine with 46/48 hour "port battle setups" IF we weren't limited to 2 PBs per nation. The argument for it was sound....but if you have different TZs in one nation, it can get rather disgusting where one TZ can potentially make sure the other TZ never gets an offensive PB in their own TZ. I honestly think we don't need limits.

Or make it 23 hours from 100% hostility and allow any amount of PBs to be setup. Seems fair?

[Fellvred]

17 minutes ago, Hodo said:

Oh so several patches have gone by and still no real changes to one of the dumbest things added to the game.

Ship Knowledge Grind.  

I understand needing to understand your ship to unlock more slots for your ship, but the fact is no one is going to grind 8-9 ships before they can fully use a 4th rate.  And ANYONE that thinks a 3/2 ship is as competitive as a 3/5 ship is a person who has NEVER PvPed good PVPers.

Currently just for a 6th rate, Navy Brig, nothing special... You have to unlock these ships fully to use a Navy Brig at 3/5.

Basic Cutter (Not the cutter that requires the Basic Cutter also) > Pickle > Brig >  Just to get the Navy Brig.  

So to unlock a Basic cutter to 3/5 you have to grind PvE missions against other small ships which take 15-40min each. (including travel time),  THEN find and buy or build the next ship in the line, ad nauseam.   It is tedious and boring, does not lead to fun game play or even promote PvP.    It just promotes those who have no life vs those who do.

The Red Duke made a suggestion a while back about making the ship knowledge being tied to the rating of the ship.  So if you spend a large amount of time sailing around in 6th rates you should unlock all 6th rates knowledge slots.   That or base it on rate and sail plan, so ALL square rig 6th rates are unlocked when you unlock one of them.. all 6th rate fore-aft rigs are unlocked when you unlock one... (not that there is a F-A rigged 6th rate anyway. *Ehem* Xebec)

I have to agree on the ship knowledge - most of it will be gained through pve grinding even on the pvp servers. Still think it's worth tying ship knowledge to just pvp xp to push ppl to fight each other in different ships

[Fellvred]

Just now, Hodo said:

Honestly I would just use a former players account information and farm alts for a few hours.

which would be reported/auto picked up and you'd be banned if it happened a few times

[GreasyMnky]

7 hours ago, victor said:

I guess you are more on the OS PVP side of the game, correct?

I try to be, but I do mostly pve atm since I see less players than npc where I sailed in the past days. 

[Nielsnnk]

testbed not working atm? or is it just me?

 

[Anolytic]

2 hours ago, Hodo said:

People do it already, with accounts they bought, what would be the difference than asking former guild mates for their account information?  It would be like buying the game second hand.

Farming alts is prohibited. And there are mechanics to try and pick it up and prevent it. Like the mechanic that you cannot get points for killing again someone you recently killed. 

Sure, one could maybe buy two ships for ones alt every day and farm it twice a day if one has the money and patience for it and insist on cheating. It would be pretty obvious in the logs though, so if reported you'd probably be banned or reset to 0 XP on all your accounts.

[Sir Texas Sir]

51 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

Farming alts is prohibited. And there are mechanics to try and pick it up and prevent it. Like the mechanic that you cannot get points for killing again someone you recently killed. 

Sure, one could maybe buy two ships for ones alt every day and farm it twice a day if one has the money and patience for it and insist on cheating. It would be pretty obvious in the logs though, so if reported you'd probably be banned or reset to 0 XP on all your accounts.

Yah I'm all against folks that abuse the system.  What a lot of these anti alts guys don't understand I have to spend three times the grind as they do to support three chars.  So I'm doing a lot more work and it's not such the easy ride they think it is to have multi chars.   

Now any one alt abusing I'll report if I catch them.  On live of course right now I really don't see it as abuse on testbed as some of us have used them to test things that we can't do without other players and some times that means fighting each other.  It was how I tested the tree for the ships the first patch that came out. I farmed on of my alts to get the easy xp to see how the learning tree worked out.  Since than haven't done it, don't plan to do that grind until live and than the old fashion legit way.  

I think there is way to much grind on that ship knowledge tree thing. It shouldn't be so much of a grind. If I want to specialize a ship I should have to be come an expert in 20 other ships to get to master in one.

[Cmdr RideZ]

OW was empty, people were scared and stayed at ports.  Scared to lose their pixel ships they were.  It took some effort to craft a ship, so was not that nice to lose my precious.

After wipe people are forced out from ports, you have to take a risk and sail your precious trader.

Crafting your ships takes even more effort, even more hours spent to craft and trade.  My precious will be MY PRECIOUS.

Will be interesting to see how much this will increase OW PvP.

[Barbancourt]

7 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

Will be interesting to see how much this will increase OW PvP.

 

Cutters...cutters everywhere! 

 

[sveno]

We (Swedes) reached 100% hostility on Leeward Islands at 19:30 server time.
As I understand it there is a RvR block between 19:00 and 09:00 server time.

Is now that port-battle 10 minutes after server restart 09:00 server time?

If so, two requests:

- First, please adjust the Euro-Blocktime from 19:00 - 09:00 to 20:00 (or even 21:00) - 09:00, weekends 22:00 - 09:00. Some Euros (esp. Brits) would like RvR after 20:00/21:00 local time - right now its to limited - many thanks!

- Second, please give in-game a clear indication when and at what time the port-battle is set and lock the hostility up to the port-battle (dont know if you could counter it, didnt test that).

Great work so far on the test server - we are looking forward to test more changes.

Edited May 11, 2017 by sveno

[OneEyedSnake]

19 minutes ago, sveno said:

 

- Second, please give in-game a clear indication when and at what time the port-battle is set and lock the hostility up to the port-battle (dont know if you could counter it, didnt test that).

 

Us dutch tried to counter your progress in orangestad when it hit 100% and could not 

[Kiithnaras]

Also of the opinion that the 20% speed buff to OW speeds that exists on live servers should remain - sailin's a tad slow on the test serb.

[William Death]

11 hours ago, Hodo said:

 

Oh so several patches have gone by and still no real changes to one of the dumbest things added to the game.

Ship Knowledge Grind.  

I understand needing to understand your ship to unlock more slots for your ship, but the fact is no one is going to grind 8-9 ships before they can fully use a 4th rate.  And ANYONE that thinks a 3/2 ship is as competitive as a 3/5 ship is a person who has NEVER PvPed good PVPers.

Currently just for a 6th rate, Navy Brig, nothing special... You have to unlock these ships fully to use a Navy Brig at 3/5.

Basic Cutter (Not the cutter that requires the Basic Cutter also) > Pickle > Brig >  Just to get the Navy Brig.  

So to unlock a Basic cutter to 3/5 you have to grind PvE missions against other small ships which take 15-40min each. (including travel time),  THEN find and buy or build the next ship in the line, ad nauseam.   It is tedious and boring, does not lead to fun game play or even promote PvP.    It just promotes those who have no life vs those who do.

The Red Duke made a suggestion a while back about making the ship knowledge being tied to the rating of the ship.  So if you spend a large amount of time sailing around in 6th rates you should unlock all 6th rates knowledge slots.   That or base it on rate and sail plan, so ALL square rig 6th rates are unlocked when you unlock one of them.. all 6th rate fore-aft rigs are unlocked when you unlock one... (not that there is a F-A rigged 6th rate anyway. *Ehem* Xebec)

 

x100000000000000000000 

I proposed a very similar system where you specialize in ship classes: as you use 4-5th rates [frigates] you start to fill up an xp pool, both on the ship you are sailing in [take Trincomalee for example] and on all other ships in that class [the other frigates].

Once you reach a certain amount of XP in the pool, one slot unlocks on ALL frigates, including the ship you are sailing on [although, if it is a small frigate, you may have already earned enough xp on it to unlock 2 or 3 slots on it by the time you get that xp pool filled enough to do one slot on all other frigates].

Then once you get more xp in the pool, it unlocks the second slot, and then the third slot in the same manner. Once you have gotten 3 slots open on all frigates this way, the xp pool goes away for frigate class ships.

If you want more than 3 slots on any frigate, you have to sail that particular ship [so I might have sailed only Trincomalee to get 3 slots open on every ship, but now I want to sail Constitution, so I use it and only have to unlock the last two slots to have it fully opened].  

Here is the thread with my proposal and more details: [I know you've seen this one Hodo, because you voted in it, but I'll just slide this in right here for others to see ] 

I think a system like this would make much more sense than this current ridiculous system. I also agree with you 100% that a 3/2 ship is not nearly as competitive as a 3/5 ship. Any good PvPer knows this and would never attempt to argue otherwise: a battle between equally skilled captains will go to the one sailing the superior ship.

[Bach]

4 hours ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

OW was empty, people were scared and stayed at ports.  Scared to lose their pixel ships they were.  It took some effort to craft a ship, so was not that nice to lose my precious.

After wipe people are forced out from ports, you have to take a risk and sail your precious trader.

Crafting your ships takes even more effort, even more hours spent to craft and trade.  My precious will be MY PRECIOUS.

Will be interesting to see how much this will increase OW PvP.

I think this is a common misconception.  Its not that players are scared so they stay in port. If that were actually the case they had the entire PVE server to play in.  What actually happens is that players get bored or feel there is little point to coming out of port and just slowly drift off into other games.  Boredom is the real killer in MMOs.  The more protection you put in, no matter how well meaning, often results in more paths to boredom and/or futility.

[Jarlath Morrow]

3 hours ago, Willis PVP2 said:

[...]

I think a system like this would make much more sense than this current ridiculous system. I also agree with you 100% that a 3/2 ship is not nearly as competitive as a 3/5 ship. Any good PvPer knows this and would never attempt to argue otherwise: a battle between equally skilled captains will go to the one sailing the superior ship.

I agree completely.

Also, I want to add another perspective - I'm not a person who only has fun sailing the best ship. But even if you don't care about being the most competitive, this change to less upgrade slots is a decrease in complexity.

I didn't like every aspect of the Regional Bonuses system, but it added complexity and build options. This is the reason that I am very much looking forward to seeing what the devs have in store for us regarding upgrades and bonuses.

It's also for this reason that I have to feel that more upgrade slots, rather than less, make the game fun, interesting, and something that I look forward to playing.

[admin]

6 hours ago, Kiithnaras said:

Also of the opinion that the 20% speed buff to OW speeds that exists on live servers should remain - sailin's a tad slow on the test serb.

speeds are the same across servers

[Cmdr RideZ]

4 hours ago, Bach said:

What actually happens is that players get bored or feel there is little point to coming out of port and just slowly drift off into other games.

They still come out if they have a huge fleet to go out with.  But if there are 4 ships outside and they have just 8, they will wait for 8 more before they go out.

[The Spud]

7 hours ago, sveno said:

We (Swedes) reached 100% hostility on Leeward Islands at 19:30 server time.
As I understand it there is a RvR block between 19:00 and 09:00 server time.

Is now that port-battle 10 minutes after server restart 09:00 server time?

If so, two requests:

- First, please adjust the Euro-Blocktime from 19:00 - 09:00 to 20:00 (or even 21:00) - 09:00, weekends 22:00 - 09:00. Some Euros (esp. Brits) would like RvR after 20:00/21:00 local time - right now its to limited - many thanks!

- Second, please give in-game a clear indication when and at what time the port-battle is set and lock the hostility up to the port-battle (dont know if you could counter it, didnt test that).

Great work so far on the test server - we are looking forward to test more changes.

Asking a stupid question here, so on the PvP Euro server there will be no RvR between 19u00 and 09u00 (as it stands right now?)

[The Spud]

2 minutes ago, rediii said:

atleast no portbattles.

You can still generate hostility which will probably be the best pvp generator because you can't port to freetownes and you have to constantly work on the hostility because it takes time

I forgot it is server time and not GMT. I feel in GMT there should be RvR/PB allowed between 18h00 and 24h00. Anthing before that is as good as doing night flips. imho.