Hotfix 8 for the testbed patch 9.99

[Jarlath Morrow]

4 hours ago, admin said:

Can you please bring a friend or ask in chat to group with someone who does fleet missions too? I am sure there are lot of people who has similar problem. Even WOW does not allow you to solo group raids.

I think you make a good point - players will have to team up more in the future. I'm okay with that, I like playing with other people.

However, I think you also accidentally make a second point - WoW doesn't have solo raids, but neither are raids the foundational PvE content of the game, as you might consider the small PvE battles that you get in Naval Action.

We can say that PvP servers are for PvP, so we shouldn't cater to new players. While I agree with this in principle, in practice it is deathly boring to fight and sink people who have not yet learned how to play. So while I mostly support the changes to missions, I would fully support the changes should we get a tutorial system or something to replace the role that missions fill.

[Sir Texas Sir]

5 hours ago, katerholzig said:

so atm u have to take a master and commander(as brit) fleet mission to make missions in a 5th rate

pretty much impossible if u sail alone in cerb or stuff like that

u should bring higher solo missions back

That is why I suggested the 1 tier off that you can do with a ship one tier higher than the mission.  Though to be honest you see the part I highlighted?   They are fleet missions.  As Admin said bring friends, or your own AI fleet.  They are meant for fleets not to solo.  Even one tier off they are going to be hard to solo. 

The solo missions are meant to help a new lower level player level up since in a lot of regions you won't find around the capital low level ships.  That gives them ships to grind on to level up until they are in bigger ships that are more abundant on the OW.   So if you past those ranks you should be in a larger ship.  If you want to grind on lower level/shallow water ships than go into the shallows.

3 hours ago, z4ys said:

While missions are like:

- pushing a button (Picking a ship and making a plan is determined by mission parameters)

- sailing to destination

- Fighting

You see less mind work fast reach of goals easy mode that's why people prefer missions over OW hunting.

 

Sounds like if some one wants to only do these after the first few levels they are better off with the arena game.

2 hours ago, AxIslander said:

@admin do we get to keep the ship knowledge we gain in the testbed?

Every thing is wipe, many of us exploited to test out the ship knowledge stuff (I did befoe the last little wipe on testbed but haven't since).   So that knowledge isn't exactly gained the legit way by many.   So why would we keep it and remember the testbed has no ties to any of the live servers.  That is why they wipe it and gives every one crafting and rank redeemable to max out.

2 hours ago, admin said:

Also.

Remember that we promised more PVE content in form of better events (raiding, intercepting, running away, stealing) and we will deliver. We just want to push players now to try more varied PVE in the open world, where you select your target and travel seeing the world. 

Right now we need to be working on the game mechanics.  more PvE content can come after release or say even while we are in beta stage iron out all the kinks.   To many people forget (even myself) that this is an Alpha Stage of a game in development.  I see no issues with the system you put in place other than making the one tier higher ship allowed part.   That would be the only change I would make cause I would when leveling up a lot of times took missions one level lower to make it more easy so I wouldn't have as high a chance to be sunk.

1 hour ago, katerholzig said:

yeah well didnt thought about ow fleets

i just dont understand why solo missions is only avaible for the first 4 ranks

but pve with fleets its even better now because of hostility

so just scratch my first post

As I said above cause they are meant for new lower level players to rank up with ships of there tier in the area of there capital that might not have many ships around for them to kill.  Once they get to the 4-5 ranks there should be plenty ships in the OW for them to grind or as Admin said get some friends and do the fleets.

[Sir Texas Sir]

2 hours ago, z4ys said:

Final step and that would fit so well to the recent changes. Would be to dump all missions. 

As long there are mission people are going to pick missions over OW pve 

There was a great solution for that back in the day....15 min open windows.   The problem was when they dropped that to 5 mins we couldn't hunt them down and they would always pick a mission over PvP to get hostility cause it was safer, but boy when we caught them with there pants down (around Kidds Island trying to flip it).  I was a blast and only took once to send them packing cause they could just exit to friendly and go home with there SOl's we didn't sink.  Now they are forced back into OW which means they better have a good plan if they plan to flip a region far from home and bring a good fleet with supplies to back them lol

[Barbancourt]

4 hours ago, z4ys said:

While missions are like:

- pushing a button (Picking a ship and making a plan is determined by mission parameters)

- sailing to destination

- Fighting

You see less mind work fast reach of goals easy mode that's why people prefer missions over OW hunting.

 

 

Instead of getting snarky (am I misreading?), keep in mind that many players have about 2 hours max to get something done in game.  I understand what you're trying to say, but in turn you should be able to understand that people value their time and this is a game that requires a lot of it.  The battles in this game take a half hour plus, AFTER you've finally found a suitable target and isolated it.  I haven't seen a lot of solo cutters and privateers for me to chase when I start out in my Basic Cutter soon.  Just one in the last few days, IIRC. (coordinating with other players takes even more time)

It is a good point that some of these ships seem to sail regular routes and maybe there's some information sharing we can do as players to improve efficiency, but at the same time I hope they aren't on really predictable routes, and I wouldn't want "hunting" to be THAT easy for those who want to find their own game in the wild.   

 

Edited May 16, 2017 by rownd

[Sir Texas Sir]

47 minutes ago, rownd said:

 

Instead of getting snarky (am I misreading?), keep in mind that many players have about 2 hours max to get something done in game.  I understand what you're trying to say, but in turn you should be able to understand that people value their time and this is a game that requires a lot of it.  The battles in this game take a half hour plus, AFTER you've finally found a suitable target and isolated it.  I haven't seen a lot of solo cutters and privateers for me to chase when I start out in my Basic Cutter soon.  Just one in the last few days, IIRC. (coordinating with other players takes even more time)

It is a good point that some of these ships seem to sail regular routes and maybe there's some information sharing we can do as players to improve efficiency, but at the same time I hope they aren't on really predictable routes, and I wouldn't want "hunting" to be THAT easy for those who want to find their own game in the wild.   

 

And that is exactly why there is solo mission up to the first few ranks, cause you won't find a bunch of small ships around the capital so they are allowing new players to do the missions.  Though once you get past that level you should be out on the OW player the game.  Not to be rude, but if you don't have time to play the open world sandbox game than the battle arena thing might be for those type of players.  I did a lot of 2 hours play when I first started and just popped in around patches and did fine. I didn't level any where faster and you shouldn't be able to if your not going to be active in the game.  Many other games are like this too that are MMO's.  You can pop on and do a quick missions fight and than log out, but your not going to level any time fast doing that. 

[Barbancourt]

Two hours is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for being "active in the game".  If that's not enough there is going to be a very serious lack of players.  Doesn't mean you're going to be Admiral Fancypants leading the fleet on the Victory, but it should be enough to enjoy most aspects of the game.

[Bubba Smith]

On 5/15/2017 at 3:24 PM, SneakyTurtle said:

Here I sit in front of New Orleans waiting for a nice NPC French fleet to appear... I'm on my Connie with a Belle Poule fleet ship (430BR).  I do see lots of fleets, 610 BR, 660 BR, 760 BR, 950 BR and a 1750BR fleet....nothing I feel like I could get a win with......Maybe ...Just Maybe I can make some hostility here.....

 

Other places on the map have much lower NPC fleet BRs. Look around you'll find lots of them. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 minute ago, Buba Smith said:

Other places on the map have much lower NPC fleet BRs. Look around you'll find lots of them. 

Isn't that a 1st rate region too?  So it should have higher BR ships in that region compared to a 4th rate region or a shallow water one by my understanding of the ships spawned in the region

Not to mention flipping a region should never be a solo thing, it should be a group thing.  You want to flip a port/region you need bigger ships/fleets to hit the bigger fleets.

[Barbancourt]

Is there a max for NPC fleet BR?  There's often one floating around Christensted with a BR of 4900.  It has 9+ Victory/Santissima type ships.  That one is easier to find than solo Cutters. Is it a standard captiol port fleet?

BTW, you might be able to detect that I'm a noob trying to catch up with and understand everything that's happening in the game so I can get started after wipe.  Lots of opinions, not much experience.

Edited May 17, 2017 by rownd

[Sir Texas Sir]

Looks like we got an update on testbed.....