Testbed Feedback - Battle UI, Localization, Patrols, Delivery quests

[Sea Archer]

My testbed experience is that the new boarding system with hidden action is somehow bad. You should see what the enemy is preparing, at least in the last 3 seconds. You might add a button for hidden action, that costs 20 action points and allows to have next action be hidden to the opponent. 

The symbols for the cannons should point in the direction corresponding to ship model at the top. It was very confusing in the beginning. 

I do not like the sails icon. The triangle is not self explaining. I would prefer a little mast with square sail. 

[Sea Archer]

5 minutes ago, Liq said:

50, not 150 marines

Still, if I got 2x the crew, the small difference in morale shouldnt result in my attack killing less than his brace

Yes, the brace command is a bit overpowered. Nearly better than defend.

[jnovotny6]

just tried to get on, testbed closed?

[Angus MacDuff]

3 minutes ago, jnovotny6 said:

just tried to get on, testbed closed?

It has a different maintenance period, I believe

[Archaos]

Having had chance now to test the trading missions I would comment as follows.

I like the missions as they take you round the map to ports you would probably not previously have visited, but there is no real downside to taking multiple missions, they cost nothing to take and you lose nothing if you fail. Granted it was easier on the test server as the chance of being intercepted is low due to low numbers online, but even on live with higher numbers a fast trader lynx will outrun most ships.

I found a couple of passenger delivery missions that rewarded mission chests, and this is an interesting feature as if you are trading far from home waters you are unlikely to be able to open these chests until you return to a home port, thus increasing the capturable loot you have onboard. The amount of doubloons you get will also soon exceed your chest space so you will have to start carrying them in your hold. My trip started out from Gustavia and headed across to Cayman Brac and Tumbado stopping at various ports along the way, then heading down to Omoa and now heading across towards South American coast and I already have 2 mission chests and around 25k doubloons, for probably around 4 hours sailing.

I am not sure if it is a bug but abandoned missions can still be handed in as you retain the item. This means you can have more than 10 missions in effect and you can gather up multiple missions for delivery to a certain area to the limit of your hold slots. You still get the same rewards whether the mission has been abandoned or not. I am not sure if the same missions appear in the list for all persons at a port, but if they do whats to stop multiple people taking the same mission and abandoning and giving one person the item to deliver for a bumper payout.

Overall I like the missions but I do think they will lead to a flood of doubloons on the market as people will just do the missions afk on their alts while playing their main for a steady doubloon income. They need to introduce some downside to failing or abandoning missions, maybe some form of trader ranking that unlocks better missions as you advance and mission failure or abandonment reduces your trading rank.

[Angus MacDuff]

1 minute ago, Archaos said:

Having had chance now to test the trading missions I would comment as follows.

I like the missions as they take you round the map to ports you would probably not previously have visited, but there is no real downside to taking multiple missions, they cost nothing to take and you lose nothing if you fail. Granted it was easier on the test server as the chance of being intercepted is low due to low numbers online, but even on live with higher numbers a fast trader lynx will outrun most ships.

I found a couple of passenger delivery missions that rewarded mission chests, and this is an interesting feature as if you are trading far from home waters you are unlikely to be able to open these chests until you return to a home port, thus increasing the capturable loot you have onboard. The amount of doubloons you get will also soon exceed your chest space so you will have to start carrying them in your hold. My trip started out from Gustavia and headed across to Cayman Brac and Tumbado stopping at various ports along the way, then heading down to Omoa and now heading across towards South American coast and I already have 2 mission chests and around 25k doubloons, for probably around 4 hours sailing.

I am not sure if it is a bug but abandoned missions can still be handed in as you retain the item. This means you can have more than 10 missions in effect and you can gather up multiple missions for delivery to a certain area to the limit of your hold slots. You still get the same rewards whether the mission has been abandoned or not. I am not sure if the same missions appear in the list for all persons at a port, but if they do whats to stop multiple people taking the same mission and abandoning and giving one person the item to deliver for a bumper payout.

Overall I like the missions but I do think they will lead to a flood of doubloons on the market as people will just do the missions afk on their alts while playing their main for a steady doubloon income. They need to introduce some downside to failing or abandoning missions, maybe some form of trader ranking that unlocks better missions as you advance and mission failure or abandonment reduces your trading rank.

How about trade ship XP and opened knowledge slots for completed missions?

[Archaos]

Just now, Angus MacDuff said:

How about trade ship XP and opened knowledge slots for completed missions?

This would not really provide a downside to abandoning or failing missions, in PvE battle missions failure usually means you lose your ship, but in trading it means nothing apart from loss of time. But trade ship xp and knowledge slots is something that is needed.

[Angus MacDuff]

Just now, Archaos said:

This would not really provide a downside to abandoning or failing missions, in PvE battle missions failure usually means you lose your ship, but in trading it means nothing apart from loss of time. But trade ship xp and knowledge slots is something that is needed.

Maybe we should have to buy the missions...or buy some kind of assurance bond...to be forfeited if mission is not completed.

[Archaos]

10 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Maybe we should have to buy the missions...or buy some kind of assurance bond...to be forfeited if mission is not completed.

That could be an option. The thing is with trading missions there is no reason to do other trade as for other trade goods you have to lay out your cash to buy them and if you get sunk or captured there is no compensation, but with missions there is no outlay.

The only other issue if you do have to buy the missions is that do you buy them for Reals or Doubloons, because as people have mentioned earlier Reals are becoming harder to get than Doubloons and I think trade missions will make this more so as the price of doubloons will drop due to oversupply.

[n_Ka]

Nice news icons !

[Baptiste Gallouédec]

3 hours ago, Liq said:

Still, if I got 2x the crew, the small difference in morale shouldnt result in my attack killing less than his brace

Ai is often fitted with barricade and probably others boarding upgrades (like marines)

[Barbancourt]

 

My feedback on the boarding in Testbed is that we should NOT be able to see enemy prep.  At the very least we should NOT be able to see enemy prep changing while the counter ticks down.  Some players are going to be hardcore enough to memorize what actions a certain amount of prep corresponds to, so the rock-paper-scissors will be even worse than before.  We should be choosing our boarding actions based on crew level, morale, and what the enemy did in previous rounds.  We should not need to memorize silly numbers, and ping should not matter.  Please remove the prep visibility. 

[angriff]

29 minutes ago, Barbancourt said:

 

My feedback on the boarding in Testbed is that we should NOT be able to see enemy prep.  At the very least we should NOT be able to see enemy prep changing while the counter ticks down.  Some players are going to be hardcore enough to memorize what actions a certain amount of prep corresponds to, so the rock-paper-scissors will be even worse than before.  We should be choosing our boarding actions based on crew level, morale, and what the enemy did in previous rounds.  We should not need to memorize silly numbers, and ping should not matter.  Please remove the prep visibility. 

I think it is that way already. 

[Barbancourt]

3 minutes ago, angriff said:

I think it is that way already. 

I'm not sure what you mean?  I'm talking about removing the ability to see enemy's prep level during boarding.  I was watching enemy prep numbers during boarding just last night.

[Sea Archer]

Maybe remove preparation level, but at some point before the action starts it is visible for the enemy. So that at high preparation cost it should be possible to counter.

Maybe we should introduce effectiveness of commands, the earlier you choose the action, the more effect it has on the battle.

[Sea Archer]

Ai behavior in ship battles should be improved. I had it twice yesterday, that ai sailed on land and stuck there until "sunk". 

Another stupid battle strategy of ai is to sail parallel to the enemy's ship, as long as it has the same speed, and simply fire the broadsides. Battles are then quite boring, when you have a superior ship. It is just firing away until ai is sunk without caring for maneuvers. 

This i had it three times, belle vs. Pavel, pavel vs. Indy and trinc vs. Navy brig.

Ai should, in case he has the inferior ship, be more focused on maneuvers and trying to stern rake the enemy.

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

I don't know , but in my openion you should see what is picking your enemy in boarding to know to react .

Edited February 2, 2019 by Fillip de Travesay

[Sir Loorkon]

12 hours ago, Barbancourt said:

My feedback on the boarding in Testbed is that we should NOT be able to see enemy prep.  At the very least we should NOT be able to see enemy prep changing while the counter ticks down.  Some players are going to be hardcore enough to memorize what actions a certain amount of prep corresponds to, so the rock-paper-scissors will be even worse than before.  We should be choosing our boarding actions based on crew level, morale, and what the enemy did in previous rounds.  We should not need to memorize silly numbers, and ping should not matter.  Please remove the prep visibility. 

No please. That would make boarding completly random. I do not even need a computer to roll a dice. 

After finishing the necessary tests with both accounts I have to say that in my personal opinion the old boarding game was better. The old transparent screen looks better than the new intranparent screen that is taking away the age of sail feeling and reminds me of 21+ century. 

Not seeing the enemy command but the prep and the muskets or melee rate is OK for a good player but makes winning a boarding nearly impossible for a beginner.

I recommend to bring back the old boarding game as long as a complete rework is possible. The boarding game should fit to the great main game.

[Archaos]

There is an exploit possible with the trade missions that can net huge returns on doubloons and mission chests in a single run.

As the same missions appear for all persons in the same port, multiple people can obtain the same mission and sail out in basic cutters with the mission item then surrender to a friend or alt in another nation who picks up all the mission items and delivers them netting multiple rewards. The instant surrender without any damage does not register with the combat clerk so there is no obvious indication that this is happening. This needs to be fixed before this patch goes live.

The mission items cannot be traded between players so at least that is not an option.

[Archaos]

Well I finished a long voyage doing just letter and passenger delivery missions and below are my rewards. Most of the trip was done afk while playing on another character, but it shows how easy it is to get doubloons now. A rough outline of my route is included and in all it took around 10 hours over 2 days. At no stage was I at risk of running out of time on any of the missions and I could have carried on but was struggling for hold space at the end. The mission took me back to Gustavia and is why I end up overloaded in the screenshot.

 

[Sparkydog]

I have got to say the new letter and passenger delivery missions are a great idea- well done devs.  Getting people to sail around the map and visit little used ports will do much to generate content for all. Well done.

[Sea Archer]

The reward for delivery missions is much too high. If i recieve 920 dubs for a mission sailing from coral bay to arecibo with passengers, why should i fight for doubloons. Those passenger or letter missions should have a maximum reward of 200 dubs, if delivered to the far side of the map.

The reward can be much higher, when a certain amount of goods has to be transferred, requiring several runs or at least a small fleet of cargo ships for transport.

[Sea Archer]

I agree to the proposal to have more reals as reward. 

Failing the mission should cost something depending on the value lost.

A letter might cost 10 dubs, loosing the passengers 100 dubs and maybe loosing a chest of gems might cost you 100k reales and 1000 dubs.

 

[Archaos]

3 minutes ago, Sea Archer said:

The reward for delivery missions is much too high. If i recieve 920 dubs for a mission sailing from coral bay to arecibo with passengers, why should i fight for doubloons. Those passenger or letter missions should have a maximum reward of 200 dubs, if delivered to the far side of the map.

The reward can be much higher, when a certain amount of goods has to be transferred, requiring several runs or at least a small fleet of cargo ships for transport.

If the rewards are reduced that low then people will not bother doing the missions. The current rewards may be too easy as there is little downside to taking the mission and failing, but as you can see from my sample trip above after a long trip away from home waters to get these rewards you soon fill up and become a very attractive target. The rewards could be reduced a bit but nowhere near what you are suggesting.

[Capn Rocko]

After trying the updated testbed today.. I am happy to see some of my suggestions regarding text size (especially the damage counters) were implemented and that the boarding prep is better highlighted when selected. Regarding grammar/text issues, I only have 3 main suggestions/criticisms left:

1. "battle sails" should just say "battle" considering that the rest of the options are labeled "full" "half" "slow" etc. When you get to "battle sails" the text seems cramped and redundant.

2. "Water" needs to go. Focusing my guns on the water makes no sense. I can just imagine a captain ordering his crew to "load cannons and aim at the water!" 😄

3. I just realized that you can hold ctrl and hover over icons to get full text descriptions of each feature. This is awesome but i doubt that many will know how to do this. Maybe there is a way to make this feature better known? 

Moving on... I still cannot get any information on the enemy ship to display at the looting screen. Am I missing something here? I do not want to capture a ship that I cannot see the stats for.

 

Lastly, the boarding is still broken as hell. If this is the true vision of the boarding mini game, I suggest we disable boarding altogether. Seeing the enemies preparation still forces us to play the "last second clicking" mini-game that the original boarding mini game was built around and it only gives veteran players an advantage. On the flip side...if you disable the visibility of enemy preparation, all strategy is lost and boarding becomes completely random.

You simply cannot change how a game is played by disabling visibility of enemy actions. For example (board games): you cannot remove the money from Monopoly and call the game Scrabble. You must redesign the boarding mini-game altogether or leave it as it was. 

Edited February 2, 2019 by Capn Rocko