Should leveling up be revisited?

[Slamz]

Disclaimer #1: it has been a long time since I leveled up and I know it's easier now but I don't really know what it's like. However, even if it's super easy it doesn't totally negate the point of the following suggestion.

Disclaimer #2: I am max level and this is not for my own personal benefit but rather because I think it will be good for the game. I see no reason to make people suffer pain just because I did.

History (from my perspective) --

The game has level grinding because it is meant to appeal to long term PvE players who, as we all know, enjoy horrifying grinds against mindless NPCs. Earning the support of these, uh, quality gamers, is important to Naval Action. Or it was, until recently, I think, when it seems Admin has taken a new course: there will now be TWO games and the main one is meant for epic open world PvP / nation vs nation battles.

Suggestion --

Now that we have a new focus for the game, let's revisit the concept of leveling up.

Do we need it at all?
Can we at least skip the first 3-4 ranks and get people into a 5th rate right away?
Can we at least make the first 3-4 ranks take something like 2 hours total, like 1 mission per rank, sort of like a quick start tutorial, the end of which is a 5th rate?

I don't see any value in making people grind levels in this game, especially not the first few, which are just a barrier to the real fun of the game. Without a serious focus on PvE content, level grinds make no sense.

Especially now that we are going to level up ships themselves, which I think is the better route to take. As it is, the new system seems to mean you will be forced to level up a 7th rate, then a 6th rate, then a 5th rate.... you are going to rank up your Cerberus because it's the only 5th rate you can fully crew and then when you gain a level you'll have to start all over with a new ship, like you have both gained and lost rank.

So do away with captain levels. Or rethink what it means. Get people into 5th rates very fast and 3rd rates pretty quick. Although really I struggle to think of a reason we should not let new players immediately use 3rd rates, at least technically -- they can't afford one but they aren't prevented. If someone hands them a million gold they can do it. And they still have to level up the ship itself (as per the upcoming new system).

Extra true with new port battle rules that means it's not just all about showing up in 1st rates. You will frequently want SOME people in frigates even if everyone has stacks of 1st rates just waiting to be used. It makes sense to have some element of nimbleness and speed, I believe, under the new system.

 

I have always worried that this game's leveling scheme was going to be a serious barrier to new players and with the new focus on open world PvP I find it harder than usual to justify keeping it the way it is. I hope this is something that can be looked at / discussed prior to launch.

[xAzDKr]

Last thing we need is people who barely understand how to manual sail going into port battles in their shiny new 3rd rate.

From my understanding, devs have tried to incorporate lower levels with shallow port battles and the like.

This is before taking into consideration alt griefing which has been an issue for well over a year, since I started playing, and is still an issue now from what I've gathered.

At this point, I am a commodore in game and I still prefer Frigate gameplay to anything else but that's because I took the time to learn the game and mechanics. I've driven everything from the basic cutter to the Victory and decided that 5th and 4th rate gameplay is where I enjoy myself the most and I am most productive. 

Edited April 17, 2017 by xAzDKr

[Bach]

As a player that came over from POTBS and other sailing games the basics of ship movement are generally the same. Manual sail was a short tutorial to know what buttons to push and then maybe a day of sailing.  So for what is probably a large part of the player base that follow the genre learning to sail the ships themselves is a very quick process.  Learning the eye coordination and timing for gunnery probably took longer.  These players can jump to end game play in short order.

For truly new new players to sailing ships there does need to be some sort of tutorial/player skills gain period. Certainly a true newbie just jumping into a port battle in close quarters with 24 other huge ships is going to quite nerve wracking for a few players.  So in this case some amount of "non-end game play" would be warranted.

Mischievious Alts are fast becoming an unavoidable flaw in mmo RvR gaming. A quick path to the end game tends to attract this kind if bad behavior to a degree. A long heavy grind to end game participation goes a long way to weeding out troublesome Alts. So in this case there is an advantage to team specific end game grinding.  This situation gets further complicated because the alt will easily appear as a seasoned sailing ship gamer as per case one above. 

 

For the above reasons I like Slamz suggestion.  Put in just enough level grind to train true new sailors and deter casual troublemaker Alts. While being less enough of a grind the lovers of the genre and RvR can get into the action faster.  What if the grind to 5th rates remained as is. Post 5th rate you still gain ranks for perks and such but you can hire max crew to participate in port battles.  

Or maybe some other system that accomplishes a similar relief from grind to experienced gamers.

 

Edited April 17, 2017 by Bach

[Slamz]

1 hour ago, Borch said:

Once again, this is not a grind but playing the game, learning and developing your skills.

Okay, so how many hours does it take to learn and develop your skills on a one mast dinghy and to what extent will those skills even apply when you get to a 5th rate?

I don't necessarily begrudge making new players start out with a crap ship but it should really be to learn the very, very basics of what this game is vaguely about. Here's a ship, here's how you make it go, here's how you make it stop and turn and shoot. I think we're talking about a 30 minute tutorial here.

There is a long tail on this game. Nuances of Surprise vs Frigate. Nuances of Trincom vs Constitution. How sailing a 3rd rate feels different. There is a lot to learn and we aren't doing players favors by creating ridiculously lengthy pathways to even begin [what I consider to be] the fun parts of the game. Especially when the path to reaching these levels is mainly some REALLY vanilla PvE. Kill 500 wolves ships.

 

Or maybe put it another way. Who here is ready for a total reset, XP and all? We'll lobby the admin and have him throw it all away and we all start over at 0. Leveling up is so much fun and with all the new mechanics changes we should all just start over and learn and develop our skills from scratch! Who's with me?! *chip chirp.... chirp chip.... chirp chirp* I'm not real sure anyone really believes the statement that leveling is good and fun in this game. Great pains and threat of riot were used to ensure they didn't have to do it twice.

I wonder if admin said "For the next test, we actually will start everyone off at 0 just to test leveling up again. Don't worry your XP is safe, this is just a 3 week test." How many people would play and how many would sit out for 3 weeks?

Just making sure we aren't consigning new players to a thing we veterans would actually throw huge tantrums over if we had to do it again.

[Bach]

1 hour ago, Borch said:

Thats what i asked in first wipe topic so I'm with you.

Why do you think that leveling up should be done only by PvE killing 500 wolves ships? Cant you do that by PvP?

What is the first ship PvP ready in your opinion?

 

Mercury for me or at least it was. Snow would work well to for PvP back in the day.  I leveled from a Mercury to 3rd rates purely in PvP over a year ago.  But here is the catch. The game was relatively virgin back then and most all the PVPrs I met were also in brigs or the occasional Cerberus. The Cerb was worthy of ooh and ahhs back then.

But here is the problem today. My opponents are no longer in Brigs. They are all in Frigates and bigger.  If a new player joins me in his brig it's going to be harder for him to level than it was for me back in the game start.   First off, other than the Bahamas there are almost no shallow water PBs any more.  He can take a mortar Brig but you kind of have to really be into the mortar thing and it's not teaching him much.  Second is the open water combat. He can certainly join in his brig. But today it comes with problems I didn't have to face. He has to score xp generating hits on player made Pvp ships.  6# guns won't do much other than a stern rake. So it's not really teaching him to sail bigger stuff anyway. Third, he is an easy target and easy prey to serious pvp players using penetrating guns meant to fight frigs that will easily leak a brig.  Three good leaks with a follow up and most Rattlers are done. His xp gains will be minimal to what I saw fighting other brigs.  We would need a dedicated shallow water play area to level him comparably in PvP today.   Yes, the Bahamas, but the rest of the population would have to play there with him for it to work.

To answer your question. Today the best pvp ship for a relatively new player to learn common pvp tactics in would be a Reno or Surprise IMO.

 

Edited April 17, 2017 by Bach

[Slamz]

4 hours ago, Borch said:

Cant you do that by PvP?

Bach covered it but just to chime in, I do not envy new players trying to XP their way up by engaging in PvP in a shallow water ship.  It will really restrict WHERE on the map they can play if they really want a chance. And with the new armor mechanics I do wonder how much XP something like a Mercury can even obtain shooting at good 5th rate or better these days, even with help.

I got to level up in something more like the heyday with 1000+ people online and PvP was still relatively sparse. We got a lot of our XP by farming NPC fleets. But there again, I wonder how much XP a Mercury can get today bouncing shots off the side of a 3rd rate. It WAS pretty good XP but I dunno if it still is, due to armor penetration changes.

I would want to get new players into a Cerberus as fast as possible. Bach is right that the real starter for "serious PvP" is probably the Reno or Surprise but there's nothing especially wrong with the Cerberus as a starter. A little light on the overall broadside but I think it's a good intro ship for 5th rate combat. I sure remember being happy when I finally got to use it.

[Sir Texas Sir]

I remember making a level and half off my first PvP fight with my second char back when he was Spanish.  He tagged a brit Bucc while in a Rattlesnake and some Pirates jumped in.  All I did during that fight was keep the Bucc tagged in by hitting sails until the Pirates caught up.  They let me keep the ship as a prize (they didn't know it was my alt, as I play pirate) as a main.   So it's not all about the PVP grind.  That same char I shortly rerolled pirate cause Spain was dead and almost all his level up to RA was done almost strictly through PvP.   I did have to grind out my last two levels as those are the hardest, but folks don't need to be rushing up to the SOl's.  They should take there time and learn the game and ships.  It's not hard to game  your first few levels even PvE grinding.

I remember in one Shallow water Port Battle even though I was the first to sink I made over 6K xp and 1.5 million credits.  Than again my complaint tally of killes was 4 sunk and 6 assist.   I had spread so much damage out my 1/4 when I was sunk turned into the 4/6 by the end of the battle.   So you can make a big chunk of xp faster by doing PvP over PvE.   

Since I have leveled three chars, Two or CURSE (RA) and one is Flag Captain I really don't see the leveling that hard, to many games make you max out in no time.  Some of the more recent games that have came out I have maxed out my chars in less than a week.  That is way to short for a semi casual player.  It should take time to advance through the ranks.  The awesome things about this game is ships aren't locked to your level and only restricted by crew and even than you can undercrew most of them very easily.  Wouldn't suggest doing that, but you still can do it.

 

10 hours ago, Borch said:

Thats what i asked in first wipe topic so I'm with you.

Why do you think that leveling up should be done only by PvE killing 500 wolves ships? Cant you do that by PvP?

What is the first ship PvP ready in your opinion?

 

Ya'll are forgeting the shallows.  H Rattler is king there, but just PvP Rattler, Niagara, Mercury are good start level for PvP.  Though one of the biggest issues right now in shallow water is the crew kill with grape.  It's just way to easy to kill crews first and than fight some one in the shallows.  They really need to look at the crew damage on these smaller ships. I can easy take some one down to 30-40 crew at the start of the fight and make them, almost combat ineffective from the start just by graping them with no armor damage.

[VonBarb]

I believe the current progression system is working fine. I started playing as a complete sailing noob, and enjoyed the Cutter because it let me explore the world and experience the combat system without requiring any manual skills to sail and fight with. The few hours I used it got me hooked to the game. Then when I knew I wanted to invest some time into learning some skills, there were the Brigs, with their two masts but forgiving handling characteristics and different profiles. New stuff to learn, personal preferences to define, but still mostly lots of fun for a noob. Then when I thought I was getting a little better (less helpless rather) I moved to 5th rates and opened a whole new can of worms. Big ones, small ones, fast ones, agile ones, tough and fragile, each requiring learning and practice to sail efficiently. I moved through all of them, changing as my rank and max crew increased, so that by the time I got to 4th rates (at the time that was just Connie) I had sailed a number of very different ships, learned tactics for each of them and had acquired a decent enough grasp on what combat in this game was about to not get entirely recked all the time by the POTBS veteran crowd.

Playing with sailing ships might be second nature to many sailing games veterans, but it's a lot to take in for others, and it takes some learning to do it right. In my personal experience, long progression through different ship types of increasing handling difficulty allowed me to build up my skills so I could hope to compete with or not hinder veteran players, without the steep learning curve ever outweighing the fun.

It also creates a moving goal, something for new players to work towards, other than "surviving a 1v5 trinc gank", "not get yelled at in PBs and shouted out of screening battles" or "have a meaningful contribution in an Event" that seems to have become the norm since I made RA and would be all that complete beginners starting out in 5th rates would have to look forward to these days...

[Dharus]

I've been playing as long as Slamz but I'm still not max level.  I don't like grinding and my play times were off of most PBs.  You can PvP in small ships but its a different gaming and mentality.  You're the fox looking for the chicken trying not to get caught by the farmer.  Unfortunately, that doesn't net you much Xp.  I enjoyed the hunt (and being chased by the farmer too) and a new player can easily enter into this game as a trader raider and not worry about the upgrades.

If a new player went this route, they may never level up enough to sail first rates in a year but will probably have the money to sail a fleet of them.  I think if I started at 0 again, I wouldn't have much of a problem because as a vet I understand the limitations of gameplay that smaller ships have.  I had hoped for more smaller ship RvR mechanics (I had fingers crossed for Raids) vs an area of shallows that are dominated by heavy Rattlers.  A new player would have trouble against experienced HRats captains and still not earn much xp from that PvP fight.  The concern is the lack of knowledge in leveling through the "newbie" ships and what's doable.  There is a learning curve here that isn't easily seen.

I think the issue is player expectations.  If you want to sail super expensive first rates, participate in RvR and blast other line ships, you'll have to grind it out which is boring but it earns you the fighting skills slowly and the cash slowly to achieve a relatively reasonable lineship gameplay experience.  However, if given first rates at start as an example, you'll STILL have to grind out gold to sail that lineship because of the expense of lineship gameplay.  So, while I'm not a fan of grind xp, its an understandable requirement to someone who's not familiar with naval action gameplay.  You'll lose more from losing 1 first rate than probably a year of small ship fighting.  Bascially, the level progression works because it helps with risk by managing your gold.  You could lose people to having to grind 500,000 gold for a new ship and crew replacement just as easily (if not more so) than someone who needs to grind xp up to the rank that they perceive is needed to PvP.

and I can't believe I'm defending level progression...

Edited April 18, 2017 by Dharus

[Fargo]

The leveling concept isnt a barrier or just ment for learning. A rank also is an achievement. Why important? Because it motivates players. When there is nothing else to do you are always motivated to just open a group to just "grind". Cutting leveling time by half already removed most motivation, but thats not a reason to get rid of leveling, but to make it harsher again. A slow paced sandbox like this needs some long term goals/achievements. 

The meta is important. With lots of 6th rates around e.g. your brig becomes much more useful. Look at first rates for example and why you need to grind max rank atm. Because nearly everybody is max rank and first rates are the PB meta. You could remove XP completely, but the meta would be really boring. The XP system defines a rank distribution, what together with eco defines the possible ship meta. Aiming for diversity of ships/a good meta, a well balanced XP system is key. 

"Grinding" isnt a problem. If grinding means playing the pve part of the game, nobody is forced into it, pvp also grants XP. If grinding means playing the game below max rank, someones understanding of the game is wrong.