Patch 9.97 - Events, minor crafting changes and other things

[OlavDeng2]

4 minutes ago, Hugh Latham said:

Any evidence of a Xebec design in the Caribbean?

Something being or not being in Caribbean isnt really an argument, considering we have plenty of ships which never came close to the caribbean, also devs have confirmed a xebec at some point.

[Snoggy]

Any eta on pirate mechanics?

[DeRuyter]

2 hours ago, maturin said:

Minor point of order:

Yards are turned by crew standing on the waist gangways and quarterdeck.

And when "braced" they would also be ducking...

[DeRuyter]

1 hour ago, Hodo said:

Xebec is one of my favorite ship types of the era, that and the Brig... I love the basic little things, or as I call them, the workhorse ships of the actual age of sail.   Everyone loves the Victory, Ballona, Trincomalee, and Constitution.  But the ships that did MOST of the work was the Brigs, Schooners, and Xebecs. 

 

47 minutes ago, maturin said:

A Xebec frigate is a rarity, not a workhorse.

Leda-class frigates were the second-most common design in the Royal Navy at one point.

I took this to mean all vessels including coastal merchants and fishing vessels, if you look at it that way he has a point.

[DeRuyter]

3 hours ago, Wesreidau said:

I proposed elsewhere that the Martello towers forming the great Caribbean Maginot Line be downgraded to little earth-and-timber batteries. Martello towers were built and balanced for port battles, not anti-piracy duty. They're fine for capitals where port battles occur, but every little sugar plantation seems to have its own cut-stone anti-SOL battery defending it.

+1 Like the idea of downgrading the Martellos in small ports to earthworks. In addition I think they should be destructible in battle instances. (I tried hitting one in a Mtr brig just to be sure!).

Don't forget though they were added to help player traders or someone running from a superior fleet to get under the guns of the port batteries. Just a few too many far up the coast in some places.

[Vaan De Vries]

58 minutes ago, Daguse said:

Yeah ganking was getting out of hand, especially when you spent days getting the fine wood only to be sunk 5 mins out of port. As for the speed changes, I don't know if speed change has anything to do with ganking as every ship got the same % of increased. 

 

not being afk and knowing your ship in current meta is enough to avoid any ganking.

Smart player in LGV won't be ganked. I am talking from the point of one who is playing NOT in a clan and was collecting materials for my own ships and from the point of player who likes to hunt alone or in pair.

You can gank LGV only if he is afk up to the point of being tagged. I myself just couple of days back escaped from battle instance in fully loaded LGV from enemy renommee who tagged me while I WAS AFK, Still I was able to escape.

Specially crafted Indiaman outsails ANY SHIP apart from Constitution and maybe Rattlesnake when going straight downwind. And due to laser stern cannons he is capable of outrunning connie in a long run. 

So pls stop complaining about ganking in this game. Better try to "gank" someone yourself and then show us your results.

 

Catering the game to casuals and removing anything challenging to achieve from the game will quickly result in more pleyerbase loss, then loosing some whinies due to a "hard crafting". But yet we had no shortage of 1st rates and Agas for PBs during this patch. Up to the point where pre-patched 1st rates without strong hull simply WEREN'T NEEDED.

A LOT MORE people left this game BEFORE FINE WOODS because it was too EASY and without any challenge (and with broken RVR). It seems now we are back on this track.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Vaan De Vries

[JollyRoger1516]

7 hours ago, admin said:

resource control remained. You still have to own certain regions to have full access to some types of wood or materials. 

fine wood removed for the following reasons. Its goal was to limit the number of rare ships and first rates, the goal was somewhat achieved together with the removal of players :). It was not a good feature and has to be rethought completely.

Hold on. Are you actually saying here that it was your goal to lose players with the last patch?!?! - IF that is the case than I gotta say - You did an absolutely fantastic job but you also have the most moronic early access strategy I have ever seen!

[Sea Archer]

I do not like the OW travelling speed increase. At least near land and near enemies the sailing feeling is lost. For me sailing is somehow slow, with time to think about decisions not this racing. If there is nothing in range it's ok, but racing along the coast fells wrong.

[Sir Texas Sir]

4 minutes ago, Hodo said:

 

Malturin was right that the Leda and the 74 were some of the most common ships in the Royal Navy.  But not on the sea.   That honor goes to the Brig, Schooner, and Xebecs.  

 

I use to have fun with the Xebecs in POTBS.  I kinda wish we had something like the Privateer but a bigger version for the shallows and us naughty Privateers (see I didn't say Pirates).    

[JollyRoger1516]

Just now, Hodo said:

I think you are missing the sarcasm in their post.  That or I am missing the sarcasm in yours. :shrug:

Seeing the patches of the last months I have lost my sense of sarcasm!

[vazco]

5 hours ago, admin said:

Lets be honest :). Fine woods were fine for some players, but the majority did not like that feature. Fine woods were implemented based on hardcore crafters and players suggestions to limit exceptional ships and first rates. Feature achieved the required goal - we saw less first rates and less exceptional ships (newly crafted), but it achieved the goal by removing players. 

I would still think whether something in between didn't work well.

Fine woods and with regional bonuses working only in a given region added complexity and randomness to crafting, without adding meaningful or fun strategies. Crafting a 1st rate required investment of hours of sailing (which PvP players didn't want to do) and luck with fine wood (which sucks if you're unlucky).

If however crafting 1st rates (and not other ships) required more time (eg. 20-30% more), but not as much effort, it could work well. Sailing a 1st rate would feel meaningful, however cost wouldn't be prohibitive. It wouldn't require work of sailing yourself or paying 10m+ just for fine woods. It would require just more time, or a reasonable amount of money.

I think that cost of 2+rates and work related with crafting them made players leave.

Edited December 5, 2016 by vazco

[Black Spawn]

7 hours ago, Luc said:

what about fire damages sails?

So i guess sail DMG didnt make it? Any ETA on that?

[Yar Matey]

Just wanted to say, for all of you that are salty about the fine woods being dropped, I am sorry you felt that way, but fine woods had to go.

 

Since the introduction of fine woods, I built a Le Gros Ventre, 2 Surprises, 1 Santisima, 1 Victory, and 1 Constitution.  All of these ships were exceptional and I am still sitting on piles of fine wood I accumulated to build ships.   I have enough right now to construct 2 more Santisima's of exceptional quality. 

 

Fine woods were bad for the game for several reasons:

1)  I spent way too much time sailing around accumulating fine woods to build my ships:  Instead of sailing about trying to find pvp, I spent a significant amount of my time sailing from port to port just accumulating these fine woods.  This hurts pvp, because instead of being in my warship, I am in my trade ship trying to avoid pvp. 

2)  It limited my ability to build certain ships types I may want:  Since I have access to mahogany and oak, I build my ships with build strength, but what if I wanted to build stiffness into the hull?  Well, being a Swedish player on pvp1, I do not have easy access to fine teak, thus I am limited to build strength.  I did manage to build 2 ships with speed, but obtaining the fine fir to do was was tiresome and required way too much work to do.  Again, not sailing about looking for pvp, but spending my time trying to figure out how to get my hands on fine fir. 

3)  It took away much needed port slots for pvp:  I had to dedicate 2 port slots for production and shipping fine woods from where I harvest the material to where I want a regional bonus.  This means, I had less ports to sail out of to look for pvp in OW. 

4)  It inflated the prices of player crafted ships you may want to buy:  Fine woods are rare and thus expensive.  The player that just wants to not deal with crafting and just buy a good ship to play the game with will be sad to see the price of an exceptional ship.  What he would have paid for a first rate ship pre patch was ~4-5 million gold.  Now with fine woods, the prices inflated to 20+ million for an exception first rate ship.  and that was if you could even find one for sail. 

Basically it all boils down to me spending less of my time pvp'ing, and more of my time playing trade simulator.  Players wanting to just buy a ship to go pvp with priced out of the market because ships were unaffordable.  So you have less pvp from crafters who are spending their time trading, less pvp because of the expensive cost of good ships (and lets face it, everyone wants to be in an exceptional ship when they go pvp), and less pvp because we had to remove port slots in pvp active areas for wood production and shipment.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Yar Matey

[vazco]

7 hours ago, rediii said:

They have to implement something for RvR players again to come back to the game and enjoy playing every evening and not only for portbattles. 

With the flagmechanic there was a reason to go every night and conquer some ports. now you dont have a reason anymore and noone wants to play PvE. we even showed you in a vote that it's not fun and you changed nothing / announced nothing.

I would suggest PvP events triggered by players who want to raise hostility, which would generate hostility instead of PvE. If done right, this would give RvR players a meaningful reason to participate every night. The trick is to do this right though. Current PvP tournaments are a good test of such mechanic.

Correctly or not, I believe I was the first guy who proposed hostility-like system. Original idea proposed PvP-centered encounters to raise it. I still believe that if we had them (a little tweaked), it would be a fun and meaningful mechanic. PvE is not fun for PvP players, and shouldn't be a winning strategy.

Edited December 5, 2016 by vazco

[Hugh Latham]

PvP raises hostility more than PvE. Attacking PvE players attempting to raise hostility is the best way to gain points on your side. Special events would require attendance at a certain time; not something easily handled by everyone living on a rotating sphere

[TrackTerror]

It saddens me that hostility RVR are still without pvp content. They last 50% can still be done without anyone able to interfere afaik. Hopefully the devs can force pvp before 100% is reached in a future patch, and please limit players national votes if they have not conducted any pvp.

[akd]

4 hours ago, The Spud said:

Maybe a charmisatic boatswain might become valuable now. I think they might have added the rudder thing to not have people sailing around with brace on all the time. You can still move yardarms, so you're basicaly still able to manouver a bit.

Perhaps, but it is nonsensical.  Yards are turned from the deck by multiple men not from in the rigging. And surely the few helmsmen can stay standing.

Hopefully brace offers less protection against double and grape shot.  In reality, these are dispersing projectiles that should increase the chance of connecting with men even if they reduce their profile by lying flat.  Brace should also not offer much protection from splinters from nearby penetrations (i.e. broadside penetrations at gun crew locations).

[vazco]

53 minutes ago, Hugh Latham said:

PvP raises hostility more than PvE. Attacking PvE players attempting to raise hostility is the best way to gain points on your side. Special events would require attendance at a certain time; not something easily handled by everyone living on a rotating sphere

You're not right. The winning strategy is to farm AI now, without engaging enemy. Special events wouldn't require attendance at certain times if they were triggered by players, in a similar way as flags were, however with a different set of rules (eg. promoting a fair combat, or offering special missions - eg. where part of attacker ships must be traders and must get to port before being sunk, or where there's a single powerful ship to defend etc.).

 

A key to success in my opinion is that:

• a winning tactic for both attacker and defender is PvP, and PvE is an addition with lower number of points gained
• defender gets a higher penalty for not participating than for loosing
• missions can't be spammed to exploit low numbers of defenders at certain hours or for certain nations
• missions with various compositions and various numbers can be launched, so that different sizes of groups with different ship types can participate without being always blocked in open world
• attacker in general looses more ships or has harder situation, however can gain more hostility for participation (in example above, trade ships that get to harbour in mission could give bigger boost of hostility, however give attacker a disadvantage)

Edited December 5, 2016 by vazco

[Daguse]

1 hour ago, Vaan De Vries said:

not being afk and knowing your ship in current meta is enough to avoid any ganking.

Smart player in LGV won't be ganked. I am talking from the point of one who is playing NOT in a clan and was collecting materials for my own ships and from the point of player who likes to hunt alone or in pair.

You can gank LGV only if he is afk up to the point of being tagged. I myself just couple of days back escaped from battle instance in fully loaded LGV from enemy renommee who tagged me while I WAS AFK, Still I was able to escape.

Specially crafted Indiaman outsails ANY SHIP apart from Constitution and maybe Rattlesnake when going straight downwind. And due to laser stern cannons he is capable of outrunning connie in a long run. 

So pls stop complaining about ganking in this game. Better try to "gank" someone yourself and then show us your results.

 

Catering the game to casuals and removing anything challenging to achieve from the game will quickly result in more pleyerbase loss, then loosing some whinies due to a "hard crafting". But yet we had no shortage of 1st rates and Agas for PBs during this patch. Up to the point where pre-patched 1st rates without strong hull simply WEREN'T NEEDED.

A LOT MORE people left this game BEFORE FINE WOODS because it was too EASY and without any challenge (and with broken RVR). It seems now we are back on this track.

So all that said, you don't really explain how the speed changes the ganging. 

Also remember new players don't have access to top of the line ships. So they are a sitting target for losing their ships. If you want a challenge pvping then why are saying it's to easy for the traders? 

Creating a game that discourages new players by being extremely difficult will not be a major success, but especially in a nitch market. They simply don't have the infrastructure to create an eve like game. Now once the core of the game is complete, by all means, create end game content that is more difficult. And with the addition of pvp hot zone, they have already started the process. 

[Qwolf]

7 hours ago, admin said:

Lets be honest :). Fine woods were fine for some players, but the majority did not like that feature. Fine woods were implemented based on hardcore crafters and players suggestions to limit exceptional ships and first rates. Feature achieved the required goal - we saw less first rates and less exceptional ships (newly crafted), but it achieved the goal by removing players. 

I'll be interested to see if numbers go back up with this patch.  We are all really just guessing what drove people to leave in droves.  I don't think increased crafting difficulty lead large numbers of people to leave.  My best guess is that while some may not have liked the increased difficulty in crafting top ships, the solo PVE grind to raise hostility, which totally replaced group PVP port battle play, is what lead to players leaving.  

Before the patch every night was "everyone jump on TS, we have to attack X port, or defend Y port."  And there would be large PVP battles before, during, and after the port battle. 
Tons of fun.  Now, everyone has to go solo PVE grind to raise hostility a smidge so that, maybe, in a few days, there will be a group PVP port battle.  So when I log on, there is no group PVP activity.  Port battles, while certainly having some limitations, definitely brought opposing nations together for PVP on a nightly basis.    I certainly didn't stop logging on because crafting got a bit tougher.  I stopped logging because there wasn't fun national/clan attacks to do every night.  I think adding back pulling flags and attacking ports as a major engine of raising hostility is an easy fix to this.  I'd log on tonight if I knew there would be something to do.   

[Balsafer]

10 hours ago, Otto Kohl said:

No RoE and crappy Maginot Line changes ? Inscreased OW speed.

 

"Good" job, now every noob will run to forts or AI fleets even faster. Could you PLEASE introduce some meaningful changes and not pointless PvE events or towing ?

 

Where are promised raiding or announced centuries ago changes in pirate mechanic ? WE WANT CONTENT !

 

For the love of god give them time to actually develop it and get it ready to test they can only do so much at once people.  

[Balsafer]

13 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Yeah, I think you're likely right on the money here.  I don't buy for a second that fine woods were the primary deterrent to players. I really wish that the RvR would revert back to the port flag pulling mechanic we had before. It certainly wasn't perfect but at least it created content for different time zones and it was relatively predictable for both attackers and defenders. Hopefully with port raiding mechanics they can introduce meaningful battles that operate on this mechanic in addition to region flipping, more deliberate and slower moving port battles like we have at the moment.

Fine wood might have been one of the reason's people left.  I did not leave just life for me got busy... 10hr days 6-7 days a week plus classes so yeah lol

[fox2run]

38 minutes ago, Qwolf said:

I'll be interested to see if numbers go back up with this patch.  We are all really just guessing what drove people to leave in droves.  I don't think increased crafting difficulty lead large numbers of people to leave.  My best guess is that while some may not have liked the increased difficulty in crafting top ships, the solo PVE grind to raise hostility, which totally replaced group PVP port battle play, is what lead to players leaving.  

Before the patch every night was "everyone jump on TS, we have to attack X port, or defend Y port."  And there would be large PVP battles before, during, and after the port battle. 
Tons of fun.  Now, everyone has to go solo PVE grind to raise hostility a smidge so that, maybe, in a few days, there will be a group PVP port battle.  So when I log on, there is no group PVP activity.  Port battles, while certainly having some limitations, definitely brought opposing nations together for PVP on a nightly basis.    I certainly didn't stop logging on because crafting got a bit tougher.  I stopped logging because there wasn't fun national/clan attacks to do every night.  I think adding back pulling flags and attacking ports as a major engine of raising hostility is an easy fix to this.  I'd log on tonight if I knew there would be something to do.   

The game got boring somewhere between introduction of 2 min timers, expensive shipbuilding, diplomacy total peace and the end of PB. Its not complicated. Compared to other games - this is a true bore.

[Bubba Smith]

12 hours ago, admin said:

Hello Captains. New patch have been deployed.

What's new:

 

Crafting changes: Fine woods removed from the game until further notice. Fine woods are no longer required for ship crafting and no longer drop during tree growth. NPC buyers have been instructed to buy fine woods at good prices if players decide to sell their acquired stocks.

As a compensation for all the struggles with fine wood two uncraftable ships were added to redeemables to all players across all servers.  

PvE events – run daily

• Time challenge – destroy 2 enemy ships in shortest possible time.
• Kill challenge – destroy as many enemy ships in 30 mins. (Boarding does not count) - every kill grants +1 repair for the player.
• Events are provided for testing. Initial ship for all events is Cerberus. In the forthcoming hotfixes and patches we will add variety to ships, enemies and challenges (demasting, boarding, etc)

PvP events – run 3 times a day

• 3 PvP events per day added (one shallow waters one deep waters) that will spawn in 2 fixed locations on the map.
• Deep water – Hispaniola channel (closest FT La Tortue and La Navasse)
• Shallow water – Bahamas sand bank (closest FT Shroud Cay and Cayo Romano)

Other changes

• Ships can now be sent from outpost to outpost (tow request). Sent ships will be delivered during maintenance. Please be wary when sending ships into contested ports.
• War supplies can only raise hostility to 50% and not more to remove the risk of hostility bombs
• Social perk returns reformed as Signaling perk. Signaling allows entry to the battle until the battle rating of both sides is somewhat equal.
• Coward perk was removed
• Brace command added for testing. Brace reduces incoming crew damage significantly and acts as a crew shock locking some of the on deck activity (repairs, reloads). It allows only yard turning as those crew on sails/yards are immune to deck damage.

Fixed bugs:

• Fixed rare bug with group list disappearing from the screen
• Fixed bug with incorrect BR calculations for several NPC ships in fleets
• Fixed bug that allowed spawn of same characteristics for NPC captured ships creating double bonuses
• Several critical exploits fixed thanks to the player Qw569

Tunings:

• Duel room distance increased to 1km
• Cannonball splinter damage somewhat lowered again
• Max possible grape damage slightly increased
• Hostility points adjusted and now depend on ship class. Port hostility points requirements adjusted as well. Approximate numbers = 1st rates 700 pts/unrated 100 pts.

Port battles entry zones algorithms and capture points placement still requires work and will be deployed in a hot fix within next week or two. 

Discuss

PvE Events:

Time challenge – destroy 2 enemy ships in shortest possible time.

Kill challenge – destroy as many enemy ships in 30 mins. (Boarding does not count) - every kill grants +1 repair for the player.

I know you want to make the ships, upgrades and paint jobs for those wonderful items challenging but; I have tried very hard many times to do my best to get the best scores possible. I have good working knowledge of sailing (obviously not good enough) and also 2500+ hours invested in this game. I will continue to try but at this point the competition is far to high for me to make top 10 or even top 30... Why do these nice items have to depend on some super-human talent I don't possess to aquire them?  Yes I know there are better players and I also know I'm not the best in this game but I do very much enjoy playing and I think my time in game should be worth something?  

Edited December 5, 2016 by Buba Smith
Made a mistake

[Angus McGregor]

For me it was a cumulative effect scenario. Yes there were specific things that really bugged me, but I could've let them slide if the rest had been fair to middling.

But arguing over which thing drove the most people away seems kind of pointless as its likely dependent on play styles.