Patch 27 - Combat missions, events and challenges feedback.

[Porpoise]

I still think we need more safer and less time consuming PVE experience available (lower risk, lower reward). The patch favours team play strongly. I am ok with this, but many players had missions as a primal source of the income. Not everyone is trading or crafting stuff, because many people find this aspect of the game boring.  

It was big fun in the weekend when we put up 4 people together and were killing large NPC fleets, scaring players away etc.. Due to my work I am too late for EU and too earyl for the US timezones, so I was used to play alone and it was possible before the patch. Now when we moved to the dangerzone, I cannot even undock, because you will be jumped by 3-4 established players immediately. 

Sorry, but I dont have 1st rates, unlimited resource of money from previous grind and so on. I have to establish a steady income and now trading and crafting is the only way.  So I log on, use my labour hours and go offline to play something else. Not much fun for me. 

Devs should realize that there is 500 players online at most, spread among 10 nations and across the huge map. So there should be more action allowing solo players to have fun. Bitter vets will say I should go capturing traders or find an active clan... this is not the way.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Porpoise

[Kilo60]

In addition... I did a new 5th rate mission w/ my clanmates and 2 out of the 4 of us either got sunk or boarded and I only survived after 3 repair cycles in an Infan oak/oak and my remaining clanmate was so badly damaged he had to leave the battle before it finished.

Mission spawned 3 essex's and one Infan.  In the past nothing higher than a 5th rate frigate spawned in a 5th rate fleet mission and the ai used to miss an occasional cannon shot and didnt turn like hell! 

My clan are all very experienced players who have been in the game for over a year and were all sailing highly modded Pirate Frigates.

It seems that all Kill missions regardless of class spawn the best rated ship of same with incredible turn rate and lazer accurate rapid reload cannons.  For instance, when the ai used to miss a lot of its stern cannons every shot now will score a hit while the ai ship is turning hard and at over 200 meters!

When experienced players all need nothing less than upgraded and modded Infan's to successfully complete a simple 5th rate mission now that's an issue!

Not to mention I got 14 DB and about 2.6k reals after sinking 3 super ai 5th rates and 1 assist.

Wasn't worth all the rum and repairs I used if you ask me!

 

In the past 5th rate missions gave you the option of lower or higher tier ships of that class with corresponding rewards.  

[Kilo60]

11 minutes ago, Hethwill the Red Duke said:

Talk to your EST timezone friends then.

GMT/CET prime time was pretty okay and with ships all over the place ( spotted by me + combat news + hostility %% )

"Pretty ok" is not a measure my friend!

What was the actual player count?

 

I'm sure it wasn't what its been the past few months!

[Angus MacDuff]

6 hours ago, admin said:

 

Good point

We will add the challenge to the Welcome to the Caribbean newbie operation and require 3 lgv stolen in a 7th rate to complete.

There's no way I would have attempted that in my first month of gameplay.  Are you planning for this to be a long term project?  I was visualizing it to be a first 100 hours thing.

[admin]

3 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

There's no way I would have attempted that in my first month of gameplay.  Are you planning for this to be a long term project?  I was visualizing it to be a first 100 hours thing.

that was a metaphor.. it needs to be balanced of course. But i still remember my first 4 hours on my second Dark souls tutorial boss… 

[admin]

22 minutes ago, Kilo60 said:

 

It seems that all Kill missions regardless of class spawn the best rated ship of same with incredible turn rate and lazer accurate rapid reload cannons.  For instance, when the ai used to miss a lot of its stern cannons every shot now will score a hit while the ai ship is turning hard and at over 200 meters!

 

Admiralty tracks kill mission success rates and moves them to another higher difficulty if they are too hard every monday. This will take 1-2 weeks to stabilize.
You can easily judge the complexity of the mission by the number of stars and number of enemies. You can take the best 5th rate into it and try again - it will be easier with experience and better fit outs (dps and tanking mods are best for pve). We are monitoring this too and adjust missions based on the statistics adding easier patterns (or harder patterns) if neeeded. 

Eventually free towns and regional capitals will have hardest missions and normal towns and capitals will have easier missions so you can find the place for you. 

Today 3 more patterns were added to 6th and 7th rates (easier). 5th rates will be added later this or next week. 

There is also an easy short cut. There are a lot of frigate only regions - just find a hunting spot and hunt in the open sea ignoring kill missions completely. You can pick time and place and attack the way you want. You can even hunt easier ships attacking them on YOUR terms (not on kill mission terms).

[admin]

3 minutes ago, rediii said:

there is no way peopole know now where which AI rates spawn in the open world. Any chance you will do something so people see what rates they find where? (Map)

they will learn to find hunting spots themselves because bots tend to concentrate (because of wind patterns) and their lower speed

but this will help to judge which class can be found where

[Hethwill]

35 minutes ago, Kilo60 said:

"Pretty ok" is not a measure my friend!

What was the actual player count?

 

I'm sure it wasn't what its been the past few months!

My glass is half full all the time, because I play a game I like to play

I'm not an accountant.

[Kilo60]

1 hour ago, admin said:

Admiralty tracks kill mission success rates and moves them to another higher difficulty if they are too hard every monday. This will take 1-2 weeks to stabilize.
You can easily judge the complexity of the mission by the number of stars and number of enemies. You can take the best 5th rate into it and try again - it will be easier with experience and better fit outs (dps and tanking mods are best for pve). We are monitoring this too and adjust missions based on the statistics adding easier patterns (or harder patterns) if neeeded. 

Eventually free towns and regional capitals will have hardest missions and normal towns and capitals will have easier missions so you can find the place for you. 

Today 3 more patterns were added to 6th and 7th rates (easier). 5th rates will be added later this or next week. 

There is also an easy short cut. There are a lot of frigate only regions - just find a hunting spot and hunt in the open sea ignoring kill missions completely. You can pick time and place and attack the way you want. You can even hunt easier ships attacking them on YOUR terms (not on kill mission terms).

This is good to know!

Currently all 5th rate Kill missions are extremely hard and anyone with a smaller 5th rate and any 5th rate unknowledged and unmodded is going to have a very difficult time completing the mission!

 

Not even attempting 5th rate x2 ships atm!!! 

[Cecil Selous]

As I learned today, I have to do the weekly frigate challenge in a 4th rate. If this is true and I didn't overlook something, can this be fixed to 5th rate so we actually need to use frigates. Or call it 4th rate challenge.

[Barbancourt]

4 hours ago, Kilo60 said:

Currently all 5th rate Kill missions are extremely hard and anyone with a smaller 5th rate and any 5th rate unknowledged and unmodded is going to have a very difficult time completing the mission!

Depends.  The 5th Rate missions I've done spawned Renommee, L'Hermione and (I think) Frigate.  Not very hard, but it can be a lot of work in weaker 5th Rates.  The AI always does the same old stuff, so if you get in trouble you can just sail off and kite them, repairing and repeatedly shooting them up the nose until they eventually die an hour later from 1000 cuts.  Boring and a waste of repairs, but you do what you gotta do.  However, it would be nice to split "5th Rate" into stronger and weaker halves.  5th Rate and 4.5th Rate, LOL.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Barbancourt

[Kilo60]

2 minutes ago, Barbancourt said:

Depends.  The 5th Rate missions I've done spawned Renommee, L'Hermione and (I think) Frigate.  Not very hard, but it can be a lot of work in weaker 5th Rates.  The AI always does the same old stuff, so if you get in trouble you can just sail off and kite them, repairing and repeatedly shooting them up the nose until they eventually die an hour later from 1000 cuts.  Waste of repairs, but you do what you gotta do.  However, it would be nice to split "5th Rate" into stronger and weaker halves.  5th Rate and 4.5th Rate, LOL.

Yes the old single combat and multiple fleet missions did this based on rank of the mission.  IIRC there were at least two difficulty tiers you could manually select for each rate mission.  With the higher tier mission for that rate paying out more in xp, gold and combat marks

They need to go back to something like they had...

 

The more mission options the better!

[Hethwill]

Took a 6th rate Kill mission against a 1x 4th rate. The rewards are really enticing, fair amount of dubloons and silver chestts, so it is one i'll keep in the journal to try until i do it.

Best part is to fill the journal with Hunt and Search&Destroy missions and just sail and fight, and raid and whatever. Eventually they all come to be complete.

Pve, PvP, Weekly kills, all contribute to the kill count in those missions, so when you suddenly reach port and check the journal and you see you have completed 3 missions at the same time is really a great feeling.

[Mr Pellew]

I am not 100% sure this is the right post for this. If it isn't please move it.

So I killed an AI Trader Brig today and got over 4900 Doubloons from it. 

I am also 2nd on the PvP leaderboard right now with 228 points. I looted everyone I sank today and it is only about half of those Dubloons.

I killed an Endy and an Essex in my Pirate frigate in one fight and got only 600 Doubloons for that fight in total. 500 looted and 100 for the kills.

 

In my opinion this should not be the case. I've heard of other looting up to 9k Doubloons of AI traders. I thought the new system was invented to promote PvP. At the moment the fastest and most effiecient way to get doubloons is killing AI traders.

Is this intended @admin or are some numbers wrong here?

[TheHaney]

1 minute ago, Mr Pellew said:

At the moment the fastest and most effiecient way to get doubloons is killing AI traders.

Is this intended @admin or are some numbers wrong here?

I mean, in my mind it makes sense that if you're after money you hit traders.

[Barbancourt]

38 minutes ago, TheHaney said:

I mean, in my mind it makes sense that if you're after money you hit traders.

In my mind if the traders have so much money they should have a potent security force.

 

[Hethwill]

The more multiplayer experiences the better. Multiplayer... play with, and if the game design allows, also against other players.

I like the idea of proper trade convoys in addition to the realistic lonesome smuggler and impatient trader that goes alone. NPCs mimic of players  

[T3rr3ur]

sorry but the new missions do not suit me, we could not choose the rank of the ship and the difficulty of the mission from any port for kills missions? the hunt and search and destroy missions do not help because the kill mission scores do not count ... the events are just hardcore scoring and I do not like it, in short not much to save from the point of view missions with patch 27 for me

Edited November 7, 2018 by T3rr3ur

[admin]

12 minutes ago, T3rr3ur said:

we could not choose the rank of the ship and the difficulty of the mission from any port for kills missions? 

You do not chose rank and ship for kill missions now. Port agents do that now. Player just picks the port where he likes the agent.
Currently the distribution is this

1) capitals - 6-7th rates
2) free towns - 1-5th rates
3) normal towns (not county capitals) 3-5th rates
4) county capitals - 1-4th rates.

kill missions do not count for hunt missions - because hunt mission is for OW hunting. 
 

[T3rr3ur]

in this case, please make the missions once executed renew themselves when we claim the mission without having to wait for the end of maintenance.  Some new players do not know what to do when their few 7/6 rank missions are done

Edited November 7, 2018 by T3rr3ur

[Kilo60]

4 hours ago, T3rr3ur said:

in this case, please make the missions once executed renew themselves when we claim the mission without having to wait for the end of maintenance.  Some new players do not know what to do when their few 7/6 rank missions are done

Exactly?

The 5th rate missions do not repopulate for me once taken at all ports that spawn them.  Also too many x2 missions that are impossibly hard for the ridiculously low payout making mission selection even worse!

[Kilo60]

6 hours ago, T3rr3ur said:

sorry but the new missions do not suit me, we could not choose the rank of the ship and the difficulty of the mission from any port for kills missions? the hunt and search and destroy missions do not help because the kill mission scores do not count ... the events are just hardcore scoring and I do not like it, in short not much to save from the point of view missions with patch 27 for me

+1.

The old style mission selection was much better!

 

We need manual control back on picking mission rates, difficulty and separation of single combat and multiple fleet missions again!!!!!!!

[Kilo60]

6 hours ago, T3rr3ur said:

sorry but the new missions do not suit me, we could not choose the rank of the ship and the difficulty of the mission from any port for kills missions? the hunt and search and destroy missions do not help because the kill mission scores do not count ... the events are just hardcore scoring and I do not like it, in short not much to save from the point of view missions with patch 27 for me

DITTO!!!!

[Hawkwood]

6 minutes ago, Kilo60 said:

We need manual control back on picking mission rates, difficulty and separation of single combat and multiple fleet missions again

"WE" don`t. It`s only you.

[Kilo60]

16 hours ago, Hethwill the Red Duke said:

Took a 6th rate Kill mission against a 1x 4th rate. The rewards are really enticing, fair amount of dubloons and silver chestts, so it is one i'll keep in the journal to try until i do it.

Best part is to fill the journal with Hunt and Search&Destroy missions and just sail and fight, and raid and whatever. Eventually they all come to be complete.

Pve, PvP, Weekly kills, all contribute to the kill count in those missions, so when you suddenly reach port and check the journal and you see you have completed 3 missions at the same time is really a great feeling.

Damn a 6th rate vs 4th rate!!! LMFAO!

Anyone that is only able to sail a 6th rate is never going to beat that mission!!!!

That's a ridiculously hard mission!!!  You better get at least 1k Doubloons for completing that one!

Your smaller cannon balls are going to bounce right off the hull of any 4th rate you fight and forget about stern camping with the new improved ridiculous turn rate of ai ships and the uber accurate stern cannons!

Me and my experienced clan are getting our butts kicked now in 5th rate kill missions in heavily modded and upgraded Pirate Frigates for crying out loud!!!  Heavily modded and upgraded Pirate Frigates in experienced players hands should have no troubles in a matching fleet battle 5th rate!