Time to hit the Reset Button

[Bach]

I've had more fun and PvP in the past few weeks than I did all last fall. This new patch iteration of the game is far better. It's put more ships on the sea and more relevant RvR. What it did not fix and what it can not fix are player hang ups and attitudes.

Its a PVE game because you chose it to be.

Making huge alliances with same size neighbors with players in your same time zone makes it a PVE game

Choosing to grind out NPCs to get enough marks to buy a mod that gives +.03 speed on your ship makes it a PVE game.

Refusing to fight unless you have a PvP ship tricked out with the best of everything first makes it a PVE game.

Purposely grinding and then fighting empty port battle after empty port battle to get huge amounts of CM marks because you won't RvR with anything less than x25 First Rates makes it a PVE game.

Assembling armies of Alts so you can use your neighbors resources without having to conquer the land makes it a PVE game.

Refusing to change tactics so you can deal with revenge fleets and choosing not to PvP until the Devs give you a way to not have to plan strategies makes it a PVE game.

You make this a PVE game by your own attitudes and choices.  You restrict yourselves to PVE because of old ideas you just won't let go or change.

 

 

Edited June 29, 2017 by Bach

[PG Monkey]

5 minutes ago, Bach said:

I've had more fun and PvP in the past few weeks than I did all last fall. This new patch iteration of the game is far better. It's put more ships on the sea and more relevant RvR. What it did not fix and what it can not fix are player hang ups and attitudes.

Its a PVE game because you chose it to be.

Making huge alliances with same size neighbors with players in your same time zone makes it a PVE game

Choosing to grind out NPCs to get enough marks to buy a mod that gives +.03 speed on your ship makes it a PVE game.

Refusing to fight unless you have a PvP ship tricked out with the best of everything first makes it a PVE game.

Purposely grinding and then fighting empty port battle after empty port battle to get huge amounts of CM marks because you won't RvR with anything less than x25 First Rates makes it a PVE game.

Assembling armies of Alts so you can use your neighbors resources without having to conquer the land makes it a PVE game.

Refusing to change tactics so you can deal with revenge fleets and choosing not to PvP until the Devs give you a way to not have to plan strategies makes it a PVE game.

You make this a PVE game by your own attitudes and choices.  You restrict yourselves to PVE because of old ideas you just won't let go or change.

 

 

what tactics deal with revenge fleets?

[TommyShelby]

2 minutes ago, Bach said:

Refusing to change tactics so you can deal with revenge fleets and choosing not to PvP until the Devs give you a way to not have to plan strategies makes it a PVE game.

Yes, because the OW PvP'ers (Small group and Solo) are forced to do one of the following things:
1. Sail tiny Fore-Aft vessels. 
2. Look for PvP in places where you'll be lucky to find a player during a 5 hours session. 
3. Join a big clan. 

The above options are ridicoulus. Your forcing us out of the game with this attitude of yours. (You don't see small group and solo players try to force Big group and RvR focused players out of the game do you?) 

[Custard]

7 minutes ago, PG Monkey said:

what tactics deal with revenge fleets?

Not sailing too close to where they may spawn?

[Sureshot]

17 minutes ago, Custard said:

Not sailing too close to where they may spawn?

Considering you can TP to any national port and open world speeds are compressed they will spawn anywhere you look for PvP in enemy waters. You can go a hell of a long ways in 90 minutes (if the battle lasts that long). So yeah, your best option of not dying is green zone camping. ^^

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, Custard said:

Not sailing too close to where they may spawn?

You can sail at least 200k in OW during a battle which takes an hour. 200k is too close?

 

And Victor. Your on the wrong side of the dura argument and the materials cost argument. The actual materials cost of a ship like the surprise is maybe 100k. Manufactures are simply selling it for double or more because they can, not enough people are out there building ships yet so the price is high because demand is higher than supply. In a few weeks the price of most ships is going to drop almost 25%. Nerfing the current materials cost of ships would make that price drop even higher.

It is NOT a good thing when everyone has millions of gold and 5 back up ships. Without the risk there is no excitement. When I can throw away 5 Surprises in a day then I'll probably get bored of this game due to lack of excitement.

Ideally clans will get rich like in Eve and start buying/paying manufactures to supply ships for their clan mates for their war efforts. There will be ship replacement programs where clans will replace your ship if you lose it in the process of a clan PVP op. This is good for the game, this is when large wars will happen.

Economy is not the real issue here (it could use some fixes though) the real issue is that Port Battles are not really a thing (aren't they broken?) and there is little other reason to fight each other except if your into piracy (I love piracy).

[Bach]

Solo and small group hunting has probably had the greatest changes in the game. But that is because last year was easy mode for them. So it is a big change. 

The Red Duke and the Sea Rovers (PVP Global) is probably one of the most successful small unit hunter clans in the game. For very detailed explanation of how to solo or small group hunt I would recommend you seek them out. Since this seems to be a recurring thing in the forums we might get them to post a guide.

Revenge fleets:

First off they are generally predictable based on distance to teleport able ports. Mostly national capitals. Last year we hunted these capitals a lot. This year that is mostly suicide.  I could go on for pages on this but I'm going to try to condense.  

The trick is to understand the new flow of the targets. Last year most targets were really just guys doing missions. They run from the capital to mission and back. So we hunted the approaches to the capitals and found PvP.  This year targets are mostly moving cargo. Though after the recent hot fix opened up missions again to bigger ships were seeing mission running comeback. But the cargo ships are the bigger win.  Now cargo ships travel further than just the approaches of the capital and back. They have destinations. The in game Trader Tool is one of the best ways to decifer likely cargo routes and get yourself positioned in the route. This makes a capital based teleporting revenge fleet nearly impossible to intercept you.

Again, I could go into a lot of detail but I'm trying to be brief.  The Suprise frigate is the fastest upwind (45) warship of size. It will bring down an Insiamen. This is the easiest weapon of choice to set up and the ports sell them cheap. Pick a free port and base from it for a week and then move on to a new one. Stay moving so they can't make intercept plans on you. Scout the cargo route in a basic cutter. If you spot a ship heading to the free port with likely cargo, grab an NPC and surrender. You will appear at the free port ahead of your target and ready.

Whenever you suspect a revenge fleet if possible leave a scout on the open sea as a look out. If it ever appears they have you camped in you CAN still log out in battle. Im not sure if this is working as intended or not but you can avoid sequential battles if you get into a position to log out inside the instance.  It will not pop you out to sea. You stay in the instance untill you log back in. When you do log back in you are pushed to OW immediately but given 30sec invis. When combined with a spotter this makes it almost impossible for revenge fleets to get you in battle over and over and over.

Anyway, like I said, a true guide on this would be pages long. You can be very successful and rich just being a pirate or privateer. But you can't do it exactly the same way we did it last year.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Bach

[fox2run]

22 minutes ago, Flinch said:

You can sail at least 200k in OW during a battle which takes an hour. 200k is too close?

 

And Victor. Your on the wrong side of the dura argument and the materials cost argument. The actual materials cost of a ship like the surprise is maybe 100k. Manufactures are simply selling it for double or more because they can, not enough people are out there building ships yet so the price is high because demand is higher than supply. In a few weeks the price of most ships is going to drop almost 25%. Nerfing the current materials cost of ships would make that price drop even higher.

It is NOT a good thing when everyone has millions of gold and 5 back up ships. Without the risk there is no excitement. When I can throw away 5 Surprises in a day then I'll probably get bored of this game due to lack of excitement.

Ideally clans will get rich like in Eve and start buying/paying manufactures to supply ships for their clan mates for their war efforts. There will be ship replacement programs where clans will replace your ship if you lose it in the process of a clan PVP op. This is good for the game, this is when large wars will happen.

Economy is not the real issue here (it could use some fixes though) the real issue is that Port Battles are not really a thing (aren't they broken?) and there is little other reason to fight each other except if your into piracy (I love piracy).

I dont get this view. If its good and exciting battles the price of the ship doesnt matter IMHO. So how can we have good and exciting battles? By making complex economy or die hard grinding? Dont think so.

[Blackjack Morgan]

7 hours ago, Cecil Selous said:

If I recall the time shortly after EA start when we had over 2000 players and the game was apparantly so much better than today, then I see that most of the things that bother you today were also a thing back than. We had a massive grind to rank up (until the devs lowered it). I looked around for large clan fleets (SLRN at that time) who attacked one AI fleet after another to grind xp and joined them. We had revenge fleets and much longer battle join timers. Revenge fleets hadn't the large impact like today because on top of that, we also had battle screen camping and logouts in battle screen. Massive RNG drops like golden marines. No teleports to outposts. At one time demasting was possible with 4 pounders at 750m distance.

Just to make it clear. I also think that some things are not going into the right direction at the moment but don't romanticise the good old days just because we had more players 

I definitely not trying to say everything was perfect back then...there were some of the exact same problems. I would say these exact same problems led in large part to the dwindling number of players. By the time some of them were corrected we had bled off a ton of people. It was only further crushed by some of the other developmental experiments I mentioned in my post. The response to make many of these changes took a very long time but most of them were improved upon. However, when you make mechanics that are very unpopular and fail to focus on mechanics that do matter you lose players and often times get bad reviews. On top of that we now have gone back and created many of those exact same unpopular mechanics that took months to get rid of. How in the world does that make any sense? 

The difference between the RNG mods from old and the current system is tremendous. Back then their were only a handful that were RNG, now just about everything is. We might have had a few that became worth a bunch of gold but who have a ton right now that are worth more and more every day. Not only that it was also pretty much universally agreed among players that all mods should be craftable. I was completely expecting the patch to move in a direction that minimized RNG from the game and put more of a focus on the actual trim of the crafted ship....right now I'd argue the mods and skillbooks are way more important. The gear mechanics remind me much more of other fantasy MMO's I've played don't you think?  

[surfimp]

4 hours ago, Bach said:

Solo and small group hunting has probably had the greatest changes in the game. But that is because last year was easy mode for them. So it is a big change.

I have always focused on hunting player traders, and I almost always hunt solo (like 99% of the time), and always in enemy waters. This has been my playstyle ever since getting involved in the OW. From my perspective, this playstyle is much more fun now than it's ever been. It's still very challenging and requires a lot of patience, but it's extremely enjoyable for those who partake.

I took a long break from the game,, between June 2016 to the wipe / mega-patch, so I may have missed some things, but compared to a year ago (era of compass wood magic money):

- The general restriction of teleports has significantly increased the amount of player traders you see in the OW. This has lead to far more opportunities for hunting than in the past.

- The changes to trader speeds have helped somewhat. An empty fir/fir trader can still easily outrun a typical 7th rate hunting ship, but one that is laden down with cargo is now much more possible to chase. You still absolutely need to have a good tag and a mastery of the points of sail of your own ship and the quarry, and if you make even a small mistake in the initial minutes of the encounter you can see your prey slip away easily. But it's definitely much more feasible than before, when it was almost impossible to catch a trader with a typical 7th rate. The Privateer - a ship literally dedicated to hunting traders - was almost useless for the purpose. That was sad.

- Captain perks have helped a lot. Area Control, Prepared and Fleet 1 are the most important in my opinion, though I could see Pirate, Area Control & Fleet 1 being viable too. There was nothing more utterly frustrating than watching a trader blink out of the battle instance because one of your grapeshot rakes didn't register anything (despite being on target and seeing splinters, etc.) and the 90 second exit timer expired. Even though you are 20m from them, poof and they're gone. That sucked. Now with Area Control, the magic blink-out is not possible so long as you stay close, and with Prepared, you can get some early chain shots in to slow down the trader. Fleet 1 because 7th rate hunting ships have very little cargo capacity, so you need to take the ship (and deal with getting it to a free or friendly port, which is exciting and fun).

- Player traders are armed now, and some of them really fight well. I like the balance here quite a bit, my hunting ships have to be built for speed, which means they are fragile, which means a determined trader can give me hell, and because I want to capture his ship and cargo I don't want to sink him, so I have to try to avoid his shots while getting him slowed down and then decrewed so I can board. This leads to some exciting and honestly pretty damn good PVP, it's not by any means simply shooting fish in a barrel trying to take down an armed Traders Brig with 60 crew using a fir/fir Lynx or Privateer. Easy to dismiss if you've never done it, but if you've never done it - using a small ship - then you don't really know what you're missing.

So, in summary I would say that compared to a year ago, I am having much more success hunting, but that's because the traders can't just plop themselves on a 135* broad reach and run with virtual impunity against my Privateer or Lynx. It might have been different in the later months of last year, I don't know because I was on a break, but compared to this time last year, the combination of more trade ships in the OW and the balancing changes has made the "Literally Pirate Sailing" playstyle a very valid and tremendously enjoyable pursuit. I am quite content with the game as it stands right now, even though a typical hunting session of 2-3 hours might at best only net 2 prizes. That is fine with me. Sometimes I get none, too, and I'm OK with that as well... I enjoy the challenge of the hunt.

[Tenet]

6 hours ago, Flinch said:

And Victor. Your on the wrong side of the dura argument and the materials cost argument. The actual materials cost of a ship like the surprise is maybe 100k. Manufactures are simply selling it for double or more because they can, not enough people are out there building ships yet so the price is high because demand is higher than supply. In a few weeks the price of most ships is going to drop almost 25%. Nerfing the current materials cost of ships would make that price drop even higher.

Correction: According to the Naval Action Crafting Calculator the cost of ships is 100% to 200%  higher due to Labor Hour costs compared to their cost in materials. 

The cost in Labor Hours of making Specialty Wood Frame Parts is obscene. The cost in Labor Hours of making Tar and Planking is obscene. Labor Contracts go for 250 to 500K on open market BEFORE massive ship-sinking conflicts occurred. 

We were told that ships will be easier to craft - they reduced material costs several times, but no one is touching the LH costs. LH costs are buried throughout the system, from extracting resources to crafting. There is also a huge PvE grind of unlocking your Warehouse to the point where you can store the ship materials and resources all at once to build a ship. There is also a huge PvE grind to unlock skill books and ONE-DURA critical ship upgrades. 

I may disagree with OP on other issues, and so with many posters in this thread, but there is no doubt whatsoever that this game is too heavy on PvE and that PvP rewards are awful for the time investment required. The problem isn't that PvP is a money sink, it's that resetting and going out again went up from 1 hour fight 1 hour grind to a ratio of 1 to 10 in one update.  Exception being small unit tactics that benefit from the "Uncatchable Joe" protection (chasing is a time waste, no reward for catching). 

Edited June 29, 2017 by Tenet

[Elbizor]

17 hours ago, Jon Snow lets go said:

Which RvR are you talking about? The patch is out for more than a month now and there wasnt a single contested PB in my nation. The only thing which still makes me log into this game is our community. Naval Action is a PvE game, time to change my review

 

Naval Action has a really amazing and addicting fighting system, which is hard to master and has a lot of depth. Also the community is very friendly and helpful for the most part.

But it feels like the developers got their priorities for this game completely wrong. They add more and more boring and monotone grind, RnG items which you need to be able to fight other players and hours of afk sailing through an empty world.

So we have the best naval combat system right here, but are unable to get actual battles because it is buried so far beneath the surface.

The RvR that's about to happen (I hope) 

So far nations have been grabbing undefended ports because they need conquest marks to build fleets. 

Now all the "free" ports are gone and any more conquest will be defended.

I'm not saying this will work, I just hope it does.

People might just sit in their ports and do nothing, which will be boring. I want big fleet battles in and around ports!

The battle lines are drawn, let the RvR begin.

[Captain Lust]

On 29.6.2017 at 8:31 AM, Blackjack Morgan said:

simply lazy game design to keep us busy for awhile

While the complete post is is very ture, undeniable and pretty much what i came to realise, this sums it up pretty well. What is even more sad tho is that they said they wanted to remove super rare items so everyone can be on even playing field in pvp.... well doesn't really matter when there is no pvp, eh? - problem solved. If i have to farm bots for days to get my upgrades - so be it... but hello kitty RNG... its giving me cancer.

[fox2run]

Before the wipe most players could play

in one way or another. Now many players can't. If you don't have much sparetime, if you like to be casual or not do the clan stuff you will never be able to play this game. It's not good IMHO. 

Hopefully NA2 will make better use of this great combat engine.

[Captain Lust]

21 minutes ago, fox2run said:

Before the wipe most players could play

in one way or another. Now many players can't. If you don't have much sparetime, if you like to be casual or not do the clan stuff you will never be able to play this game. It's not good IMHO. 

Hopefully NA2 will make better use of this great combat engine.

I actually like that you don't get the ships handed to you on a silver platter anymore. More small ships and less big ships ( in theory - looking at you zerg clan exploiters ). And the game was always grindy for casuals - but also fun. This added grind for basically nothing just kills casuals ( who lets be honest are already hello kittyed in this game ) even more. These people quit before they even know about the retarded new korean style mmo gear grind in pve... hits me right in the feels since i love the game and really want it to succeed - but im just a dreamer...

[Hagen v Martius]

1 hour ago, fox2run said:

Before the wipe most players could play

in one way or another. Now many players can't. If you don't have much sparetime, if you like to be casual or not do the clan stuff you will never be able to play this game. It's not good IMHO. 

Hopefully NA2 will make better use of this great combat engine.

Yep. it really takes a proper hardcore player to get basic materials from the starting province a few times a week (if that takes more than 10 minute you're doing something VEEEEERY wrong) and turn them into hull and rig repairs at the capital to sell them for a very nice profit while spending the rest of their free time they want to waste on NA to do whatever else they want.

Totally inaccessible to everyone but no-lifers that are willing to spend 24/7 of their time in front of NA. 

 

Get a grip man. Your whining was ridiculously far removed from reality before the reset but now you somehow managed to make it even worse...

Edited June 30, 2017 by Hagen v Martius

[Cmdr RideZ]

6 minutes ago, Hagen v Martius said:

if that takes more than 10 minute you're doing something VEEEEERY wrong

Can you join my clan?  10 minutes all is done?  I sail to PvP and lose a ship, 10 minutes and you are able to make me a new one?

[Cmdr RideZ]

59 minutes ago, Captain Lust said:

I actually like that you don't get the ships handed to you on a silver platter anymore.

You probably do less PvP.  If you do PvP, you sail in revenge fleets or in bigger fleets when you go to enemy waters.  It can be that you sail a Pickle, or in the best case scenario you sail a Surprise.  Ganking is probably your PvP playstyle.

You are crafting/trading/PvE oriented player.

Edited June 30, 2017 by Cmdr RideZ

[Captain Lust]

24 minutes ago, Hagen v Martius said:

Yep. it really takes a proper hardcore player to get basic materials from the starting province a few times a week (if that takes more than 10 minute you're doing something VEEEEERY wrong) and turn them into hull and rig repairs at the capital to sell them for a very nice profit while spending the rest of their free time they want to waste on NA to do whatever else they wan

If thats your source of income you must be piss poor... Also with carebearing in your green zone you can't understand the loss of a upgraded ship in real pvp... 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Captain Lust

[Captain Lust]

5 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

You probably do less PvP.  If you do PvP, you sail in revenge fleets or in bigger fleets when you go to enemy waters.  It can be that you sail a Pickle, or in the best case scenario you sail a Surprise.  Ganking is probably your PvP playstyle.

You are crafting/trading/PvE oriented player.

 

Not really... i just avoid zerg zones like the swedish gank coast guards waters - RIP fair play liquicity 2014-2017 forever in our hearts...

If you waste ships because you go around hot spots begging for revenge fleets, thats on you - most players in this game are cowards and they will abuse any mechanic as much as they can to gank... it's to be expected

[Cmdr RideZ]

3 different fleets.

4x Pickle

4x Surprise

Surprise, Essex, Trincomalee, Constitution

...

Who would sail in the last fleet?  Why it does not make sense to sail in the last fleet?  Why all ships has to be tweaked to go 15kn?  What is the purpose of those ships in this game?  Why speed upgrades are so expensive?

If you say the game works now just fine, you are sailing very specific ships.  Speed Surprise would be a good example.  Does that make a good game?  It probably does not.

Speed is important because you have to be able to run OR gank.

I want to sail to PvP.  I may win, or I may lose.  Most important for me is that I and my opponent have a good fight, and probably fun.

Revenge fleet is fun?  Chasing someone with your gank fleet is fun?  Running from a gank fleet is fun?

This game really sucks at the moment.

(Big part of what sucks is that you cannot afford to lose ships, you cannot afford to take risks and sail to war)

Edited June 30, 2017 by Cmdr RideZ

[tonyxyx]

22 hours ago, Bach said:

Solo and small group hunting has probably had the greatest changes in the game. But that is because last year was easy mode for them. So it is a big change. 

WTF are you high?Last year Devs killed solo players with ai fleets and forts everywhere making solo playing almost impossible.Now it is defintely impossible.

[Bach]

8 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

3 different fleets.

4x Pickle

4x Surprise

Surprise, Essex, Trincomalee, Constitution

...

Who would sail in the last fleet?  Why it does not make sense to sail in the last fleet?  Why all ships has to be tweaked to go 15kn?  What is the purpose of those ships in this game?  Why speed upgrades are so expensive?

If you say the game works now just fine, you are sailing very specific ships.  Speed Surprise would be a good example.  Does that make a good game?  It probably does not.

Speed is important because you have to be able to run OR gank.

I want to sail to PvP.  I may win, or I may lose.  Most important for me is that I and my opponent have a good fight, and probably fun.

Revenge fleet is fun?  Chasing someone with your gank fleet is fun?  Running from a gank fleet is fun?

This game really sucks at the moment.

(Big part of what sucks is that you cannot afford to lose ships, you cannot afford to take risks and sail to war)

Your statements above have defined your problem for me.  You are thinking to narrow minded and to be honest not even trying. 

If I tell you I make 6 million at week doing 45min total of cargo runs you are going to tell me it cant be done.

If I tell you I sail what ever ship I want and can build them all you will tell me it cant be done.

If I tell you I PVP everyday you will tell me I must be a ganker or otherwise must sail some tiny ship to make that possible.

For some, if they really want to find out what is causing them trouble in this game, they need a mirror.  Some just seem to have some pathological need for the game to be broken.

 

[Hagen v Martius]

Boy oh boy. Reading comprehension is on short supply today, eh?

1 hour ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

Can you join my clan?  10 minutes all is done?  I sail to PvP and lose a ship, 10 minutes and you are able to make me a new one?

Did I talk about replacing ships, my dear? No? What a shame... 

No, I talked about what a casual player in this game can do to have a decent enough essentially passive income that will allow him to experience the game in a casual way. Complete with trade, production and ready access to 4th rates and PvP to a certain degree if one is so inclined.

Yes this will obviously exclude him from the by necessity more hardcore elements of the game - PB an ready access to SoL most prominently amongst this, unless he joins the occasional screening effort - but if it's supposed to be the goal that everyone can do everything in this game regardless of time and effort put in, then any of the myriad arena style games out there will be better suited for that.

It's just a shame that for the time being there is none that offers anything decent for the age of sail itch, eh?

 

1 hour ago, Captain Lust said:

If thats your source of income you must be piss poor... Also with carebearing in your green zone you can't understand the loss of a upgraded ship in real pvp... 

It's enough to have generated me the 750k I currently have in the bank, various ships and however much I had to spend on workshop and plantations and such. If that is "piss poor" then the devs failed completely with their changes. But whatever floats your boat... 

But then you, like RideZ, missed my point entirely there.

Of course you can make way more money by doing long trading runs yadda yadda. But my dearest whiner of the entire game up there complained about the game not being playable for "casuals" and people that aren't in a clan, which of course is certified nonsense as per usual.

 

And please, I do my share of PvP with my buddies. Always have, so don't go around assuming.

RvR is where I clock out, so yeah I will never comprehend the mind-numbing, earth shattering shock of losing my pixel 1st rate because - and this might shock you just as much, my dear - I couldn't give less of a crap about anything bigger than an Indefatigable and sitting in circles for 90 minutes.

Ok maybe I'll do the occasional exception for an Aga because it's an incredible beauty, but neither of the two is all that good for OW PvP anyway.

But unfortunately all of this is irrelevant to the point I made, which is that the game is perfectly playable on a casual level.

 

So we conclude:

A swing and a miss for both points. Try again.

Edited June 30, 2017 by Hagen v Martius

[Bach]

10 minutes ago, tonyxyx said:

WTF are you high?Last year Devs killed solo players with ai fleets and forts everywhere making solo playing almost impossible.Now it is defintely impossible.

No, I was a solo hunter from last year. It was easy. Especially with the battle exit screen teleports.  Didn't have to think ahead, plan an outpost logistically or set up any money making side projects.  Just sail off KPR, hunt the 20 degree line on the handy provided map grid and sink players doing mostly missions.  At some times it was even boring.  You didn't make much money off the player kills because most of them were not hauling cargo. They were grinding out missions.

This year its got challenge. Especially with the battle screen teleport get out of jail free card removed.  Its not impossible but the days of sailing off a national capital taking prizes the old way and teleporting home when it gets tough are essentially gone.

 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Bach