Mega Patch 10.0

[Quineloe]

Early game setbacks from sinking once are quite severe now.

[Neptune]

It's almost as if we are being punished if we go and look for PvP now. Sink once and there goes 5 hours of work down the sink. Are the high prices somehow supposed to make PVP and this game enjoyable again? As far as I can see it's not working too well. 

Also hull repairs are insanely expensive, only the largest clans will have endless amounts of these and on a 15 minute timer. Seems the skill based combat you created is getting farther and farther away from that.

Edited May 27, 2017 by Neptune

[Smithy]

XP earned from sailing I think should contribute to skill slot XP. you are sailing the ship, you are learning the ship.

[TBD]

AFK sailing does not teach you anything

[Simon Cadete]

9 minutes ago, Comrade I Stalin said:

AFK sailing does not teach you anything

But but that's 90% of gameplay!!!

[Simon Cadete]

I miss my Santissima.... lol

[ironhammer500]

Id like PvE server to get back solo missions, i mean its PvE server the content is in the server name, we can not PvP so no reason to populate the OW for us.

Edited May 27, 2017 by ironhammer500

[maturin]

13 minutes ago, ironhammer500 said:

Id like PvE server to get back solo missions, i mean its PvE server the content is in the server name, we can not PvP so no reason to populate the OW for us.

It's the devs' prerogative to restrict access to mediocre content and improve player experience by promoting superior content. Ultimately, that's what this is about.

[ironhammer500]

27 minutes ago, maturin said:

It's the devs' prerogative to restrict access to mediocre content and improve player experience by promoting superior content. Ultimately, that's what this is about.

Its about PvPers whining about stuff as always, we had to ask for ports to be make neutral because pvpers whined about resources not being rare, so now they are rare so people take ports...great but pvers can not take ports so some nations had no resources to produce with player buildings.

Right now we are finding the OW hunting is not really rewarding we hunt and hunt and find fleets that have rubbish or the ships we need but outmatch our BR but 5x most times.

So i think solo missions for PvE back again will help with the slow increase for players, it will bring back gold income to and let players cap ships, ship capping will make crafting useless anyways so why restrict PvEers to have to spend hours and hours on OW?

 

Edit: Battle rating scaling seems to be far to high atm for fleet battles when you get to Post captain missions they seem to double or even triple the BR of your fleet.

Edited May 27, 2017 by ironhammer500

[Farrago]

The XP you grind on the free Basic Cutter doesn't count on the regular Cutter?!?

[Fellvred]

Slight rant but hey  I've had to work on a Saturday yet again :p. Since the reset I've been trying to get back into the open world and RvR but I've just found it all a bit boring.

The best way of making money (for 90% of the population) at the start is to grind the same mission in the cutter over and over. Obviously I don't have data on this but it seems there is hardly any pvp going on compared to the number of people on the (pvp eu) server. If an average player wants to go and pvp there is a smaller reward and a much higher risk when compared to PvE. 

Yes PvP and RvR need to have a wide effect on the economy and logistics for the battle between the empires but it also needs to be fun. For most ppl the cycle of chase, gank, run, repeat is not fun. Port battles where most of the time the two fleets just stay at range and shoot at the top sails (because they are scared of losing the ship and having to grind missions again) are not fun. 

 

I know Legends will be entering player testing soon but PLEASE let's not lose sight of why there used to be fleets of players using up their spare time to fight at KPR etc for no other reward than the fight itself. 

Rather than just being told to go and look for pvp in enemy waters there need to be mechanics to push pvpers together and incentivise good play rather than only giving rewards for a total victory and encouraging 'unfair' combat.

[Sir Texas Sir]

9 hours ago, MassimoSud said:

Some notes (2nd)
We are testers so we need to know the gaming mechanics to verify that they work as you expected, so we would like to know:
1. How ship knowledge evolves for each ship (a grid reporting all stats would be more than welcome as soon as possible)
2. Special ships refit. Same as before, a list of advantages / disadvantages and materials and / or knowledge necessary to craft them would be welcome.
Thanks and good job again!

@admin We really need a copy of the ship knowledge tree.  

I'm wondering about the refits.  If you get say the British refits from British ships than how can a British player get the refit cause they can't sink there own ships.  Same for Pirates and other nations.   We need a little more explanation of these instead of going out there and grinding and guessing how things work and hope on RNG.  I thought we where removing the RNG factor of a lot of things99, but we are even worse off than the rare GOLD MARINE DROPS.  Now it's every thing has to drop. 

Edited May 27, 2017 by Sir Texas Sir

[Sir Texas Sir]

2 hours ago, ironhammer500 said:

Edit: Battle rating scaling seems to be far to high atm for fleet battles when you get to Post captain missions they seem to double or even triple the BR of your fleet.

How many folks are you taking to do the fleet missions.  What we found is they seem geared for about 4-6 players.  YOu tend to allways have 2-3 more enemy ships but the more you get over that it tends to equal out with mostly allways 1-2 more ships. If you have less than that it doesn't lower the number of ships.  So the fleet mission truely want us to be in groups of 4 or more to do them and not have to struggle or bring tons of repairs.  The other thing many of us are putting way low class guns in our ships just to get the hell out of the cutter and we don't want to even try to go up the tree to fill the slots.  FOLKS JUST DON"T WANT ALL THIS GRIND.  It's insane I have to open 3-5 slots on every ship below the one i want to be in. That is what 4 ships for just the suprise not counting the basic cutter.  That is a lot of grinding and most folks don't want to be in those low level ships for long after they have been maxed rank for a long time.

15 minutes ago, Farrago said:

The XP you grind on the free Basic Cutter doesn't count on the regular Cutter?!?

Why do you even need the cutter, the Privater and Pickle go off the basic cutter now, the cutter isn't in any tree.  

Since @admin stil hasn't posted the Ship Knowledge Tree I'll share something our clan did on testbed.  This might not be exactly accurate as it's info from before they did a few of the changes and wipes on testbed.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PHxx0WQIGShFK8z6dfGe0CsjoKg32YtpeS8GuvTFaDs/edit?usp=sharing

[ironhammer500]

We normally take 4-5 people in fleets but its  the ramp from Master and com to Post captain that wipes us out, fights 3-4 4th rates + 2-3 5th rates at the same time when we have no hope of winning, in the attempt to cap 4th rates to get out clan decent ships, but its proving to be almost impossible.

This is why i asked for the solo Missions back that way you fight 1 or 2 4th rates and makes its easier atm for players to get ships and get into the game, with only 1 dura losing ships is so painful and with no crafting replacements do not exist.

[Liq]

Q: Is it coding-wise possible to make it so after capturing a player ship, you can loot his cannons too? So you could loot his cannons and then sink it for marks

[Sir Texas Sir]

53 minutes ago, Liquicity said:

Q: Is it coding-wise possible to make it so after capturing a player ship, you can loot his cannons too? So you could loot his cannons and then sink it for marks

Even if it's just a small percentage like how you get a few cannons from some of the AI ships would be cool.

[Brogsitter]

Short feedback on the first impressions:

Some things are good, some are just screwed .... as  usual 

Specially the economy needs to be fixed ASAP. The NPC are still selling Matrials / Resources cheaper than a player can produce it. Thats just wrong and game killing.

Here is a quick "how to" for a possible fix:

• the whole economy (ship production) should be player driven
• remove all NPC production of resources, materials, consumables and cannons
• raise the amount of building slots up to 10 (8 might be enough though)

=== discuss ===

Edited May 28, 2017 by Brogsitter

[Sir Texas Sir]

On 5/25/2017 at 6:02 AM, admin said:

the ship knowledge tree remained the same from testbed.  will post it shortly

We are still waiting on this....any word?

Also tonight on global somethings where talked about. Could be nice if you actual did a little explanation of how the drops/refits and such work.  Right now it seems it's random and really here is no reason to conquer a region. As I said I can and have gone into ports not owned and bought goods like the Crooked Cedar.  So refits or nothing more than a random RNG drop that any one can get no matter the region.   

Why can't Pirates get the Pirates refit free.  Each nation have there own refits they get and the only way other nations can get them is by capturing a ship that has the refit on it.  Right now you can have with the luck of the RNG gods a bunch of British players with Pirate refit and none of the pirates with them.  You can have a bunch of French with Spanish refit and etc and etc....it's all RNG now.  If each nation had there own special perk about them than it would give folks to pick one nation over the other.  You can do something like.

PIrates are good with sails so they get  a speed buff.

British are good with there guns so they get a reload buff.

French are accurate with there guns so they get an accuracy buff.

American's are known for there strong built ships so they get a buff to HP/thickness.

Spanish tend to have more agil ships so they get an agiltiy buff.

Dutch are known for being mechant traders give there cargo holld a buff.

No clue for the Swedes and Danes, but each buff can be small and even can be done like a refit BP that only know how to craft if your part of that nation.  Than the refit can be put on a ship.  

[ironhammer500]

32 minutes ago, Brogsitter said:

Short feedback on the first impressions:

Some things are good, some are just screwed .... as  usual 

Specially the economy needs to be fixed ASAP. The NPC are still selling Matrials / Resources cheaper than a player can produce it. Thats just wrong and game killing.

Here is a quick "how to" for a possible fix:

• the whole economy (ship production) should be player driven
• remove all NPC production of resources, materials, consumables and cannons
• raise the amount of building slots up to 10 (8 might be enough though)

=== discuss ===

This is a good idea for PvP server where you guys have 500 players, but for PvE this is some what a bad idea since was only 180 players on peak last night, so we lack players to produce, assuming everyone is using buildings.

They just need  to lower the cost of player run buildings so they work out cheaper to produce then npc price per unit.

[Quineloe]

I'd wager the vast majority of the playerbase doesn't really care at all about minuscule amounts of port produced resources being sold for cheap.

[Neptune]

160 Hull repairs

320x Iron Ore, 80x Charcoal, 480x Oak Logs.

Now tell me this, how are smaller clans supposed to obtain these without grinding endless amounts of AI to get them just to PvP? How is this a good idea? You are forcing players to fight AI just to get a decent amount of repairs to compete with large clans. Right now it's not so bad, but this will only get worse. For instance the trincomalee uses 10 hull repairs at once so you can use up to 60 per battle on a 15 minute timer, how does that make sense? 

So in 3 battles you could possibly use 320 Iron Ore, 80x Charcoal, 480x Oak logs on just ONE trincomalee... So tell me how casual players will compete with those who have a endless amount of repairs?

Combat is no longer about skill but more about who spends more time Grinding AI and Trading to craft repair kits. 

On a PVP Server why is there so much holding us back from PvPing right now? Repairs cost so much now it's actually funny. Grind AI to get them for free sure, but that's not why people play on the PVP server. Making players grind AI just to get a ticket to PvP makes no sense. Repairs as they are now are way to expensive.

Edited May 28, 2017 by Neptune

[Hethwill]

Is there any community made list of the breakdown of repair amounts per cycle per ship ?

 

[Vernon Merrill]

Yes, repairs are very expensive.  I agree completely. (Maybe even a bit too much)...    

However, keep in mind the point of this.  We had it very easy before.  Anyone could easily become a millionaire and sail any ship with impunity.  Those days are over. 

Sail what you can afford to lose.  

[Quineloe]

It has always been my impression that the intended design here is that the bottom 90% of the playerbase (in terms of win/loss ratio in PVP) have to grind a lot of PVE to sustain the PVP hobby.

[SeamanStaines]

Dear DEVS I am forced to speak frankly about this patch. It seems to me that you have done everything possible to make the game as  difficult as possible. I have got 3800 hours or more on NA and have always enjoyed logging on to play. Until now. Frankly its not enjoyable anymore. The fun has gone to be replaced by frustration and boredom.

1. Perpetual grind required and little reward.

2. Cost of cannon and single durability ships make it impossible to take any risk in PVP. Days and days of solid grind can be lost in a single combat.

3. Trading requires endless sailing with little reward unless you can find a loophole that I am sure you are busy closing as we speak.

4. Crafting appears to be out of the question unless you have alts or clan. Even then the clans are struggling at this point. And its too expensive to manufacture or buy material given the meager rewards.

5. Repairs require manufacture and even if you can make them (most cant) they are used up at a horrific rate.

6. I have endless time on my hands to play. But for those with limited time it will be impossible.

Example of frustration. I just lost a ship because I had no repairs available as I am unable to manufacture or buy. Now to replace the ship and cannon its back to grinding in a cutter. Have you any idea how frustrating it can be after a solid week spent grinding in a cutter to have to start again.

Although on balance many of the game changes are improvements I think you have gone over the top on lack of rewards and high cost of crafting/manufacture. Isn't it supposed to be fun?