Seasonal Patch: The Missing Links Part 1

[Hullabaloo]

18 minutes ago, William Carrow said:

don’t know anything about the person you’re trying to attack

I was talking about the game and it's playability, you were the one who started using words like 'whining' and 'silly' because you didn't agree with what I said and now you accuse me of attacking you? go away you wierdo troll

[You]

1 hour ago, admin said:

All changes serve the purpose; to recreate the historical combat in battles.

So when can we expect the hotfix where the upwind speed of square rigged ships (mainly lineships) have a heavily decreased top speed at less the 60* off the wind?

*waiting excitedly on my 2kn santa cecilia 15* off the wind*

[admin]

3 minutes ago, You said:

So when can we expect the hotfix where the upwind speed of square rigged ships (mainly lineships) have a heavily decreased top speed at less the 60* off the wind?

*waiting excitedly on my 2kn santa cecilia 15* off the wind*

Will you make a computer game so i can play it and test this idea?  I will gladly steal this feature if it works well. 

You see i like how wind works on average, but did not like how guns worked. Now all guns penetrate any wood at close range as they should have.

btw the chance of proper dead zone is a lot higher now than before

[William Death]

3 hours ago, William Carrow said:

The problem with your line of thinking is the underlying belief that since the Indy is further along the linear progression of ships, the Cerb shouldn’t be able to hurt it.  Boring linear gameplay is bad game design.  Skillful seamanship (and marksmanship) by a Cerberus skipper who knows his boat and is good at fighting her should still be able to beat a lubberly-handled Indefatigable.  Not being able to hurt the thing just because it’s a higher class and the artifical numbers of its masts and hull are higher than the artificial performance numbers of your guns is stupid and arcade-y.

 

2 hours ago, GhostOfDorian said:

You still have the speed to run away from a line ship. Brawling a line ship will become highly risky now. Is there something wrong with that? I think it was always a cheap tactic to attack a line ship, and as soon as you got some damage you just used your speed to sail away.

Don't think that intercepting traders in front of important ports will happen with line ships now. There frigates still have their playground.

Methinks you two are playing a different game than the rest of us 🙂

To address Carrow's example: demasting between frigate classes has always been possible. You had to be good to do it though. Now, speaking as someone who has been demasting ships since 2016 as a primary tactic, I can tell you that having ships capable of taking masts off at insane ranges is not ok. Do you want every battle to devolve into a demasting competition? [insert dramatic oil painting here]. Because while that sounds fun, I can assure you, its really not. 

A good point was brought up: most people are sailing 3rd rates or above anyways now (thanks Redoubtable). They have the guns needed to take down your frigate masts at basically any range that you could hope to do any real damage to them at. 

Also you are incorrect assuming that a frigate has the speed to run away from a lineship. Clearly you have not encountered a well handled speed-built Bellona, Redoubtable, Ingermanland, or Christian. While its true, the frigates do have the sailing profile and enough of a base speed advantage to run away upwind, due to random wind shifts every ~15 minutes, thats not always possible. And all it takes is one or two smaller ships sailing with the speed built SOL and its GG for the frigate. Now this wasn't a problem back in the day, because there were a very small number of those speed built SOLs going around. They were basically only useful when employed as above, fighting players too clueless to turn upwind. But now, everyone who has the DLC can get a fast, highly competitive PvP ship that will catch all but the most clever (and very lightly built) frigates. And now they can demast them from 500m+, even if they run expensive mast mods.

Since the damage model rework last year, its been a fool's errand to sail anything smaller than a fast 3rd or 4th rate. Currently I think its even more ridiculous. 

However, admin's comment about potentially changing repairs gives me a little hope. If repairs become limited again, and the mast thickness and cannon penetration values get tuned a little bit more, then we'll be a step closer toward a skill-based combat model again.

There's still going to be a massive imbalance in woods and gear meta, but thats something we've been arguing about for years now.

[Despe]

7 minutes ago, admin said:

Will you make a computer game so i can play it and test this idea?  I will gladly steal this feature if it works well. 

You see i like how wind works on average, but did not like how guns worked. Now all guns penetrate any wood at close range as they should have.

btw the chance of proper dead zone is a lot higher now than before

so interesting but you forget the playability and now with new mast mechanichs is imposble make a good ballte, for example in PZ of 10-20 players during almost 1.30 hours because you destroy the playability with mast mechanics. And what about PBs? The same... we will see tons of PBs in which the main goal will be demast the enemy and not play the battle... New mast mechanich is stupid and innnecesary idea that nobody wants in forum in past post.

[Despe]

x

Edited August 22, 2020 by Despe

[William Carrow]

11 minutes ago, Hullabaloo said:

I was talking about the game and it's playability, you were the one who started using words like 'whining' and 'silly' because you didn't agree with what I said and now you accuse me of attacking you? go away you wierdo troll

K pal.  I provided a countering opinion (while even being nice enough to go out of my way to acknowledge the validity of yours) and your response was to try and call me a no-skill whiner.  I’m neither a troll nor am I going to shut up and go away, but I’m not getting into an online pecker measuring contest with you either. 

[Archaos]

12 minutes ago, William Death said:

To address Carrow's example: demasting between frigate classes has always been possible. You had to be good to do it though. Now, speaking as someone who has been demasting ships since 2016 as a primary tactic, I can tell you that having ships capable of taking masts off at insane ranges is not ok. Do you want every battle to devolve into a demasting competition? [insert dramatic oil painting here]. Because while that sounds fun, I can assure you, its really not. 

So what you are saying is that it is okay that you have the skill to do it but not when everyone else can do it with less skill. For the person getting demasted the feeling will always be the same. People have complained about the demasting for a long time but people like you who had the skill to do it have always defended mast sniping, but now it does not take any skill to demast someone you do not like it.

I am not saying you are wrong, just pointing out the irony in what you are saying.

[William Death]

12 minutes ago, Archaos said:

So what you are saying is that it is okay that you have the skill to do it but not when everyone else can do it with less skill. For the person getting demasted the feeling will always be the same. People have complained about the demasting for a long time but people like you who had the skill to do it have always defended mast sniping, but now it does not take any skill to demast someone you do not like it.

I am not saying you are wrong, just pointing out the irony in what you are saying.

No...no irony. I meant it exactly that way. Demasting has always been within anyone's grasp. You just had to take the time to learn to do it well. Same with hull angling, chasing tactics, etc. It takes skill to learn (took me probably 100 hours of practice before I could do it with reasonable confidence). You can't spam broadsides at the hull and expect to do real damage if the enemy angles. Why should you get to spam broadsides at the rigging from long ranges and take a mast down? This may be "historical" but its not so good for gameplay.

You should have to think a little bit. Aim at the masts, and roll the broadside into it. Not throw shot in its general direction from 500m away. 

Thats my whole point. When you take a tactic that previously took skill, and put it in a place where it becomes the normal tactic and everyone is able to do it with minimal practice....then the game has lost a skill element. I've seen this game lose a lot of skill elements over the years, I'd hate to see it lose one more.

[William Carrow]

32 minutes ago, William Death said:

 

Methinks you two are playing a different game than the rest of us 🙂

To address Carrow's example: demasting between frigate classes has always been possible. You had to be good to do it though. Now, speaking as someone who has been demasting ships since 2016 as a primary tactic, I can tell you that having ships capable of taking masts off at insane ranges is not ok. Do you want every battle to devolve into a demasting competition? [insert dramatic oil painting here]. Because while that sounds fun, I can assure you, its really not. 

A good point was brought up: most people are sailing 3rd rates or above anyways now (thanks Redoubtable). They have the guns needed to take down your frigate masts at basically any range that you could hope to do any real damage to them at. 

Also you are incorrect assuming that a frigate has the speed to run away from a lineship. Clearly you have not encountered a well handled speed-built Bellona, Redoubtable, Ingermanland, or Christian. While its true, the frigates do have the sailing profile and enough of a base speed advantage to run away upwind, due to random wind shifts every ~15 minutes, thats not always possible. And all it takes is one or two smaller ships sailing with the speed built SOL and its GG for the frigate. Now this wasn't a problem back in the day, because there were a very small number of those speed built SOLs going around. They were basically only useful when employed as above, fighting players too clueless to turn upwind. But now, everyone who has the DLC can get a fast, highly competitive PvP ship that will catch all but the most clever (and very lightly built) frigates. And now they can demast them from 500m+, even if they run expensive mast mods.

Since the damage model rework last year, its been a fool's errand to sail anything smaller than a fast 3rd or 4th rate. Currently I think its even more ridiculous. 

However, admin's comment about potentially changing repairs gives me a little hope. If repairs become limited again, and the mast thickness and cannon penetration values get tuned a little bit more, then we'll be a step closer toward a skill-based combat model again.

There's still going to be a massive imbalance in woods and gear meta, but thats something we've been arguing about for years now.

I’ll preface this by stating for the record (lest I be accused of being a troll again) that I say this with the utmost respect for you and your experience, but it doesn’t match mine. I used to demast as a primary tactic until the masts were buffed into near-invincibility, but when I started racking up 30, 40 mast hits in a battle with no demast I stopped.  Now, maybe the current setting is over the top, but I remain firmly of the opinion that the way it was before was entirely too far in the other direction.  The masts and rigging are far and away the most fragile and vulnerable part of a ship and for it to be easier to sink it outright than to dismast it is just completely ridiculous.

[kapteinsnabeltann]

you guys really removed global chat!
 

im very upset and angry now.

its very hard to get me upset and angry.

i hope you are pleased with yourself

silence the lamb

[William Death]

6 minutes ago, Lieste said:

Angling is irrelevant, even counterproductive.

False. It bounces shots. Go in a Victory and get shot at by a cannon from a 45° angle. It bounces. Now try it with no angling at all. It penetrates and does damage.

I'm talking about gameplay here.

6 minutes ago, Lieste said:

For a 32lb gun, rather than a single 6" hole, mostly filled with fine splinters (to the extent that a pencil can only be introduced with difficulty) usually between frames, you get multiple frame timbers shattered, huge blocks of timber blown off from knees etc, over a significant number of frames. It being impossible to generate a shot path which does shatter one or more of these important timbers.

None of this will occur, if the shot bounces. (or is aimed into the rigging because the latest patch makes everyone want to demast)

For the context of my post above, I don't really care about your theoretical 'real-life' comparisons. What I do care about, is game playability, which is what my post was about. We have a lot of historical incongruities in the game. Five+ feet of hull thickness, reviving dead crew, rebuilding half of your ship, or all of a mast every few minutes, magical woods with insane bonuses, etc.
Cannon damage vs historical accounts is not the hill I make my stand on. I'm not sure what part of my post triggered this 'historical rebuttal' but allow me to assure you that I was not suggesting that any of the changes made were historical. I look at the game first and foremost from a playability standpoint.

I will briefly point out, that from a historical standpoint: ships have a lot of frames. If you look at the plans and paintings from the time, many ships have very very close frame spacing. Also, while frames are important for the overall structural integrity of the ship, historical accounts reveal that ships could take an immense amount of hull punishment. From personal experience with wooden boats, a few missing or compromised frames is not the end of the world.

[William Death]

26 minutes ago, William Carrow said:

I used to demast as a primary tactic until the masts were buffed into near-invincibility, but when I started racking up 30, 40 mast hits in a battle with no demast I stopped.  Now, maybe the current setting is over the top, but I remain firmly of the opinion that the way it was before was entirely too far in the other direction.  The masts and rigging are far and away the most fragile and vulnerable part of a ship and for it to be easier to sink it outright than to dismast it is just completely ridiculous.

We must define the period we talk about. I think the best mast balance was during 2017 NA. You could have very strong masts, but they'd always be vulnerable from close ranges. Most masts were demastable with their ship's largest caliber to 250m, with 8-16 well-placed shots. 

And thats key. You had to be good to get those shots in before the enemy ripped you apart. No sitting at 500m and spamming broadsides until their masts come down while you also spam a repair every 12 minutes.

Even a few months ago, masts were OK-ish. You could get those impenetrable masts that'd take 30 or 40 hits and not come down, and I agree, that was a little too much.

And I agree with you that from a realistic perspective, the hull will take a lot of punishment and the masts can fall from the sail pressure and just losing some of the standing rigging or the chainplates. But from a gameplay perspective...its overtuned I think. 

I tested it some on testbed and it was way too easy. Its supposed to be toned down some now, but looking at the numbers, its still too easy to shoot down masts without needing any skills.

[Henry Long Castle]

6 hours ago, Cetric de Cornusiac said:

With loot stealers we deal on PvE discord by making them public and warning everybody.

There is this guy, Advantage that was doing the same thing on the PvP, we just put a bounty on him a couple of times and he stopped doing it :p.

 

[William Carrow]

19 minutes ago, William Death said:

We must define the period we talk about. I think the best mast balance was during 2017 NA. You could have very strong masts, but they'd always be vulnerable from close ranges. Most masts were demastable with their ship's largest caliber to 250m, with 8-16 well-placed shots. 

And thats key. You had to be good to get those shots in before the enemy ripped you apart. No sitting at 500m and spamming broadsides until their masts come down while you also spam a repair every 12 minutes.

Even a few months ago, masts were OK-ish. You could get those impenetrable masts that'd take 30 or 40 hits and not come down, and I agree, that was a little too much.

And I agree with you that from a realistic perspective, the hull will take a lot of punishment and the masts can fall from the sail pressure and just losing some of the standing rigging or the chainplates. But from a gameplay perspective...its overtuned I think. 

I tested it some on testbed and it was way too easy. Its supposed to be toned down some now, but looking at the numbers, its still too easy to shoot down masts without needing any skills.

I can never recall which iterations were during which timeframe (I bought the game like the second week it was in beta...it’s been a long time and the dates get fuzzy, not helped by the fact that there were multiple long absences and entire patches that I missed), but I used to like to snipe masts with individual shots from long guns at a long enough distance to avoid most return fire.  I *think* this was during the same timeframe as AI traders were unarmed if that helps?  Bear in mind I don’t really personally care for ships of the line and prefer frigates and brigs so maybe that will clarify my position some and why I feel masts were entirely too strong.  I feel like insufficient caliber is a poor argument for failing to dismast someone - you could bring a mast down with a rifle if you shot enough of the stays that hold it up, and masts were generally made of some kind of pine...that said, obviously it can’t be too easy to score a mobility kill on an enemy from too great a distance...but I feel like accuracy should be the limiting factor there, not gamey, arcade-y, artificial numbers of thickness/hp vs gun caliber and penetration values.  I will have to take your word for it that the current value is overtuned, which is perfectly plausible since that is often the case with new iterations of this game - but I would be curious if fiddling with the long-range spread of broadsides (to make them less effective at extreme range) might be a more authentic way to balance that then buffing mast hp or thickness again?  That would also reintroduce the player skill of accuracy with single shots if they want to try and dismast at range instead of just blasting off a broadside and hoping for the best.

[Obrien]

Would be nice if cannon balls would bounce and skip along the water. This was a real technique that might have reduced power but i think it incread accuracy? Also it means shots arent waited when aiming for the waterline.

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

10 minutes ago, Henry Long Castle said:

There is this guy, Advantage that was doing the same thing on the PvP, we just put a bounty on him a couple of times and he stopped doing it :p.

 

Nice. Which reminds me I have to ask from time to time we get the consensual duel thing on PvE. Then we could all challenge nasty loot thieves.

[Archaos]

8 minutes ago, Cetric de Cornusiac said:

Nice. Which reminds me I have to ask from time to time we get the consensual duel thing on PvE. Then we could all challenge nasty loot thieves.

and why would a loot thief agree to a duel?

[Henry Long Castle]

Its more effective when they know that people will actively hunt them in battles to collect the bounty XD

[Thonys]

Hi.

is there any news on:

-flags 

-nation buildings

[freddykrueger66]

oh god... first the woods and now they made it so cannons cost way more reals to craft too (42 pdr longs went from 103 reals to 2300)... this kind of weird logics is really starting to push me away from this game and makes me think the devs have no clue how people play their game. PVP has basically no rewards and you need an insane amount of reals to get woods, mods, ships, reps and now cannons to be remotely competitive... Not to mention the complete unbalanced gameplay atm with regards to demasting. Please make either pvp more profitable so people want to fight instead of only thinking about ganking or reduce all prices so it's accesible. Atm it's only based upon getting kills which won't happen if you get ganked, PZ is already pretty nice in that regards where damage counts. Can you imagine playing world of tanks or call of duty but you first need to farm 5 hours to craft a sniper rifle or tank so you could lose it in 10 minutes? I miss the days where every ship and mod was super easy and cheap to craft and you could actually just play the game, how strange xD or good old sea trials... RIP

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

32 minutes ago, Thonys said:

Hi.

is there any news on:

-flags 

-nation buildings

Nation buildings are part of this patch. Never did a French colony look more beautiful here.

[Conte D. Catellani]

I had some lag problem with the warehouse and the chest with dobloons, combat medal etc. 3 second of lag all empty then after 3 4 second I could see the things I have inside. 

Also the ship I had that problem, I could see the ones in the other outposts but I had this lag of 3 4 second to see the ones where I was. 

[LadyBellaDonna]

Which brainiac of you developers came up with the chats? You take out the only communication between nations and why, because some brain-dead people can't control themselves while writing! You guys have an ignore function, so why don't you use it or just close the chat! You could also use chat moderators or a chat filter that doesn't allow certain words! But cutting off communication is just stupid!

 

[Brig at sea]

10 minutes ago, LadyBellaDonna said:

Which brainiac of you developers came up with the chats? You take out the only communication between nations and why, because some brain-dead people can't control themselves while writing! You guys have an ignore function, so why don't you use it or just close the chat! You could also use chat moderators or a chat filter that doesn't allow certain words! But cutting off communication is just stupid!

 

contact the @Riot stick who is working with an amazing IT student guy who he knows. That student IT guy can create a automatische wunderwaffen software that can solve all the moderation problems with chat automatically. It was supposed to be ready in just a few hours, two weeks ago. 
 

Edited August 21, 2020 by Brig at sea