How to make skill matter? - Suggestions

[BungeeLemming]

@Raatha:

 

1: Timers may be too long, agreed. However it wont save you from an organized gank. Already you can escape ganks by looking for the next best NPC fleet (3rd rates are plenty) and voila. Skill? nope.

 

2: Repairs:

Everybody is treated equally. It actually adds skill. Cause if you time your repair badly you can loose a fight.

Surely you can run from fights easier. But as admin stated long ago: If you miss the opportunity to finish off your opponent you dont deserve the kill anyways. -> skill to know when your enemy is about to run. Positioning of yourself matters alot.

 

3:turning in place:

Sure you can do that. But Ill be tacking and getting the wind and rake your big ass stern all day long.

If sol fleets do so you can use Aboukir tactics.

 

4: the firing cones..

They were a good thing. Absolutely nessecary for new players to easen the game.

And for the more experienced you still have to correctly estimate all relative positions from the gun firing and the point you want to impact.

Only good players can hit 99%. cant be some sort of skill, right?

 

5: Modules are absolutely nessecary. Players want to indiviualize. But its true that it has to be improved even more.

but is that reducing the skill? Not at all.

 

6: Hull HP: You want battles to last 2 minute? 5 maybe?

The game right now feels very good and may even be right on spot with ships of the size of frigates and above.

(Brigs are weird imo)

 

7: Duras:

Adding SKILL with reducing the ability to PvP more often?

Do you read what you write?

scenario:

I want to have dayly PvP. 5 dura ship. Devs said 5 duras are worth a good pvp evening. Lets say 3-4 hours of playing, fighting some minnor refits n harbour etc.

Now reduce it to one dura. What will happen?

1st: Players think not twice but thrice of even more time about risking the ship they have.

2nd: I loose my ship, have to find a new one, sail a lot to even different harbours to finally find the ship I want.

But why? I only wanted to do pvp? Now I have to do econ/ shop.

The consequence: less players will do less pvp and the skill over all will lessen but some elite pvp players will rule the world.

Great times aproaching.

 

___

Sorry if some stuff sound harsh but I dont think you thought some stuff you propose through 100%.

[Johny Reb]

Jodgi... The pic you posted with the alternate aiming marks was tried over a year ago in early testing. It was to OP in my opinion and removed skill from the game not added it.

 

If we are looking for a way for a single excellent Captain to beat 2 average players than we must find ways to increase the skill curve. That would mean you would have to make everything harder which is unlikely to be good for gameplay if taken to far. Some have suggested removing the aiming bar which would make the game harder and introduce more skill to the game, but I believe would cause frustration in the average player which isn't what we want, is it? I also don't think we should touch sailing. It should be as realistic as possible and not artificially made more difficult or easier. If anything was to be added to sailing it should be more sail control but I imagine that would take a load of work and I'd rather more content.

[Reki]

2) Repairs - I thought testing went well and was a positive step when they were removed.  If all things are equal in terms of balance, repairs only exist as another means of escape if they are doing poorly in battle.  (repair then run and escape)

 

4) The introduction of firing/aiming assistance in sectors removed a ton of skill from gunnery.

 

5) Modules/Upgrades - While I initially didn't have an opinion on this, over time it just feels unnecessary for the game.  It simply gives people who have a lot of time to grind an advantage and that advantage is in no way tied to skill.  It also has the consequence of creating imbalance for a particular play-style from time to time with balancing issues (i.e. boarding or speed...)

About repairs and modules I agree. Current modules is zero point thing. Repairs rly does only last escape ability job. Early it had some tactical use.

Didn't understand what he talking about in 4-th, but sniper aiming was better for me. And long distance fight too.

Heeling was great skillcheck also. specially when your ship was broken or had 20+ white holes on side.

[akd]

I think veterans just cant see the valley from the mountain of 1 year of experience.

New players are still struggling fighting with a cutter.

And i think that asking for more realism people feedback slowed down the game so you cant see skill anymore. Its just too slow and deliberate where mistakes could be corrected even before the other side notices it. And because its slow skill threshold is lowered. Imagine Counter strike at 10x slower speed. Thats what we got thanks to realism lobby

What? This is a really reactionary takeaway from discussion (ignoring lots of relevant feedback and focusing instead on tangential negative feedback), and CS is a terrible comparison. Combat is better now than ever before, and wins against odds in PvP happen quite frequently (which would suggest that there is little leeway for mistakes; much less now than there was before). I even screw up now and then and sink / lose against the AI which is something that never used to happen because there was huge leeway for mistakes and plenty of time to manage even a very, very bad mistake.

In my opinion, we are in realm of tweaking.

[SeamanStaines]

We have come a long way since ST where a cutter could de-crew a Santi. We have seen multiple repairs and complete mast replacement go away, seen the unsinkable ships disappear, waved goodbye to rage boarding and spent endless time tweaking and adjusting sailing characteristics and gunnery. In my opinion the game is very playable at present. I worry that any big changes could set it back and lead just to fresh exploits. So my view is that if it isn't broken lets not try to fix it. Nearly all the long term players have developed skills. Its not a surprise therefore that 1 vs 2 is difficult and frankly I see this as a demonstration that the combat model is pretty good rather than lacking in some way.

[Guest raat]

___

Sorry if some stuff sound harsh but I dont think you thought some stuff you propose through 100%.

 

I understand your points and I don't think you're being harsh at all.  I also just don't think you really understood my points either.

 

It's not that I'm saying the game has zero skill.  It obviously has skill.  But my point is that those 7 things, cap or limit the skill potential.

 

So a poor player failing to escape properly with wind, failing to have proper aim even with the aiming aids, failing to time their repair properly, etc. etc. will of course lose.  And turning in place, durabilities, etc. limit skill potential by being crutches for players.  However, those things require a modicum amount of skill and practice to master.  So like half the player base at this point can manage those things and there's no real growth potential from there.

 

The game is simply too easy to master at the moment.  And isn't that what this whole thread is about?

 

But to address a couple of your points, I do disagree that repairs and durabilities add skill.  Repairing properly isn't skillful.  It simply just adds time to the battle.  If you're winning or losing a battle, repairing isn't going to turn the tide of battle.  Maybe in like 0.01% of battles and surely that has to do with a mistake on the enemies part.  The winning or losing side is only going to take longer to win or lose, and gives the loser more time for an opportunity to escape. 

 

Duras simply are a crutch.  People who want PvP will still PvP with only 1 durability and it would force the player to be vigilant about his own skill level and OW positioning to make sure he kept that precious ship or would force him to play more PvE if he were too fearful of PvP to make sure he had backups.  As it is now, there's no need to worry about your own skill because losing a dura has no consequence until your 5th.  But it's exponentially easier to maintain gold for another ship if you have no need for it until you've lost 5 ships.  So why worry about skill?  Just worry about gold.

 

But hey, that's how I see it.  You're freely welcome to disagree.

[Prater]

I think veterans just cant see the valley from the mountain of 1 year of experience.

New players are still struggling fighting with a cutter.

And i think that asking for more realism people feedback slowed down the game so you cant see skill anymore. Its just too slow and deliberate where mistakes could be corrected even before the other side notices it. And because its slow skill threshold is lowered. Imagine Counter strike at 10x slower speed. Thats what we got thanks to realism lobby

You may be right. I think battles are mostly perfect, just a few touches here and there are needed. I brought up raking because someone said they need to be more devestating, but they are already extremely devestating. I also think skill matters in battle as well as luck, as it should be. The main thing is the join timer.

[Puchu]

Yes prater, the main thing are the join-timers, that we need down to 1 min. 

 

(The 1 min timers are not meant to save you from an organized gank btw.)

 

 

 

About the reload shocks: The threshhold needs to be higher, so reload shocks dont happen in equal ships 1v1 combat if their purpose is, how admin described it.
(-btw.: It is really hard to accomplish a timed 2:1 broadside with 2 ships in a pvp environment, i will keep trying it, but i have jet to accomplish it. )

[Magnum]

I would like to see ramming deemphasised from the game. As it is in the meta it is THE thing to do to a first rate with your frigates, which suffer little as the first rate struggles to stay afloat (or dosn't).

 

If the Frigate or Connie doing the ramming suffered the "actual" physics they would be left a de-masted, shattered, sinking hulk - while the first rate would carry on with the fight after some repairs.

 

After all how much "skill" does it take to ram a much bigger ship?

[Voi_Ta]

I suggest more analytical approach and step back with different question:

***************

What does affect the battle outcome? What leads to loss or victory?

***************

When we have list of those things, we can discuss them separately how to make bigger difference between good and bad execution.

[Voi_Ta]

I think there are 3 main categories:

1) pre battle

2) in battle macro (positioning etc.)

3) in battle micro (shooting accuracy etc.)

Please come with as much things as possible.

[Puchu]

Voi_Ta

 

We alrdy know how the game works.

 

Right now the win is dependent on the following components in the following ranking:

 

1. Amount of players

2. Shipsize

3. Modules

4. Maneuvering skills

5. Shooting skills

 

 

I'm  a bit struggeling where to put the modules, because the module choice is much more important in 1vs1 fights, than it is in 25vs25, but you get the point i guess. 

 

In a 1 vs 1 you can offset a lot of the enemies material advantage by putting him into deadmans position (bow-stern) but in a 2 vs 1 or a group fight it is allmost impossible to evade a material advantage because someone will allways have a good angle to shoot you. Even if 1 of the 2 just sails next to you and broadside trades, you cant avoid it, because you have to keep the other one in deadmans position, or you will loose for sure. And you cant take out one of them fast enough to make the fight more equal. Even if you get amazing rakes , kill the enemies rear in 1 ballrake and finish him with a 200+ crewkill graperake and immediately board him and the enemy doesnt disengage and only stays in brace. even then his ally will just shred you to pieces during the boarding time.

[Voi_Ta]

@Puchu: Well this topic is about how to tweak the game, not only how it works now. Also not sure about your ranking, if you have really bad player who is unable to hit anything, it doesn't matter if he has good modules or ship. (I know such a people.) We must not forget that about what people are playing NA now. They are early adopters and simulation fans. It is a very different breed that will eventually play the game after it is released. Now we have only good players and excellent players. The bad players are casuals who will come after the game is released and gains some popularity. So the difference between people skill in pre-alpha is smaller then it will be in released game. Also, bigger ship = more battles and probably better skill.

----------------------

 

Lets think about the idea of skill: There is some optimal way how to do things and then you can screw it up to a certain degree. Skill is how much can you do it in optimal way. So in order to make bigger differences in outcome. the mechanics must be more difficult or the situation is more complex with more mechanics. So we can increase the difference of outcome by making the game more complex and mechanics harder to execute. As the effects of mechanics multiply, the more mechanics there is the bigger difference.

 

Pre battle

-crew skills/experience

-commander specialization

-superior munition that has to be loaded pre battle and cost currency

(we already have)

-crew numbers

-modules

-ship/player number

-ship type

 

In general i like sidegrades rather then upgrades. For example two different approaches to this in League of Legends and World of Tanks.

1) WoT - you grind to get the upgrades. Vehicle with upgrades is superior in every aspect to the one without them. More hp, more dps, faster.

2) LoL - you fill mastery tree with sidegrades. You might get survivability but but you cannot get more dps or speed at the same time. BETTER in my opinion. Runes are sidegrades too.

Sidegrades allow players to exploit inherent strong characteristics of a ship and build their playstayle around them. They bring fun and variety to the game.

 

So for example maybe we could have rounds that would fly further or rounds that would have less spread, but not both at the same time.

 

2) in battle macro

(we already have:)

-orientation in fight, positional awareness

-movement (Slower acceleration could punish mistakes more. Proper manual controls for fore-and-afters. Remove zero speed turning.)

-ship coordination

-destinguish between friend and foe. (Remove names above ships. Or at least remove colors from minimap.)

Ships could be distinguished only by flags, not name or colors. Flags signals and their usage. We can elaborate more on how to do this.

(Extreme example is when player would use the flag of enemy. His friends of coordinated group would know that his ship is with them by the signals he would use, but it would confuse disorganized enemy. Not sure if this is a good idea :-) )

- Make ramming less rewarding (requires little skill.)

 

3) in battle micro

-micromanagement of repairs

-more precise crew assignment

(we already have:)

-shooting (timing, gun elevation, waves, distances+elevation, ammo types) Maybe we could aim from the view of one cannon (gun port).

-be able to destroy the masts

-bigger effect of low crew

 

Edit 11:23 + Proper manual controls for fore-and-afters. Remove zero speed turning.  Make ramming less rewarding.

Edit 11:29 + be able to destroy the masts, bigger effect of low crew.

Edited January 17, 2016 by Voi_Ta

[cmdrbobcito]

As always, a great discussion from many points of view.  For my two pence of observation I'd like to comment on the early transition of Newlies to the game.  Outside of Clans and formal groups I'm not aware of an organized "one one one" type training program for the beginner/new "unaligned" players.  Are there any current "Sea Daddies" who are openly training?  I'm talking about sailing/fighting academies... where students could acquire the skills and knowledge to fully participate in any/all segments of the game.  Any number of ways to remunerate the academy or instructor... gold, grind or shared plunder from "training missions".  Just a thought... fair winds and cannon smoke to all.

[Tremor]

i do not think that making the game harder (remove autoskipper for example) is more fun for the most players.

 

so i am against that.

 

maybe you make it a checkbox like forza where you could turn of helpers and get more xp ?

Edited February 4, 2016 by Tremor