How to frustrate new players: Final Exam!

[John Hood]

Ok I understand its the final exam but it should be hard... well I play this game now for a while and rushed through the other exams...  now the final one with the ai changes?... 5 tries so far and I always sink one while the other one sinks my damaged ship when every time.. and I think my tactic is kinda sound always chain the 1st one to like 50% then kite them so they are seperated sink one... and one go after the 2nd... but I for example had one of the cerbs take like 40% of my side off while being angled and trying to get close to board him.. and apparently they shoot super ammo at super angles and hit perfect. Now I can images a new player... going through the turtorials... easy sailing... going through the exams... oks... final exam... wow...  i actually tried once just for fun and giggles how it is if you actualy in new player fashion would fight the two ships and maneuever etc without kiting... they hit so hard my surprise sunk in under 5 min LOL

[John Hood]

Oh and how suspicious... a russian player somehow managed to finish it in 10 min ? I woulder how the heck you do that  

[Kleinburger]

Get one ship into the wind put that ship between you and the other ai. Rush board the first one, immediately set action to attack then last second switch to fire deck guns, rinse and repeat until its morale is down to 0 then attack. Repair and recrew then go after the remaining ai. Also don't forget to use your '[' ']' bracket keys during the boarding for extra crew kills on the enemy.

Edited June 14, 2019 by Kleinburger

[Vernon Merrill]

And yet, everyone seems to be completing it....  weird.

 

[John Hood]

I guess I try the boarding I just saw the tutorials where it was about slowing one and sinking the other it worked since i always got one... but was pretty damaged after that and the second one always got me... even if I got him down to half... I wonder if captains perks actually do anything in it I got double chot and charge but doesnt seem to count... because one you tube video actually mentioned perks....

[John Hood]

Just now, Vernon Merrill said:

And yet, everyone seems to be completing it....  weird.

 

yeah thats why I still see so many basic cutters... just everybody did it on first try... glad for your really insightful comment

[Guest]

Its really not a good tutorial. Its a great scenario and great 'test' but its really silly to expect noobs to manage it.

[Zoky]

Final exam depends on luck more then anything. Either you get good position during boarding or they rape u. Now experience can help you with that first boarding but even then its more luck then skill

Edited June 14, 2019 by Zoky

[John Hood]

15 minutes ago, John Hood said:

I guess I try the boarding I just saw the tutorials where it was about slowing one and sinking the other it worked since i always got one... but was pretty damaged after that and the second one always got me... even if I got him down to half... I wonder if captains perks actually do anything in it I got double chot and charge but doesnt seem to count... because one you tube video actually mentioned perks....

The boarding seems to work... I had one down within 5 min... so I guess picking an actual fight was the mistake... the 2nd one shot down my surprise and I just changed ships to the 2nd cerb and transfered crew and repairs after all she was undamaged... now comes the fun part did all that, did change ships... and even when I moved the slider to transfer all crew I ended up on a cerb with 2 crew LOL oh well a glitch I guess but thats how to do it in 10 min

[John Hood]

22 minutes ago, Zoky said:

Final exam depends on luck more then anything. Either you get good position during boarding or they rape u. Now experience can help you with that first boarding but even then its more luck then skill

Yeah right now its pretty much get one move into the wind and get stuck for rage boarding... if they go both with the wind I just surrender and try again until one does the "right" stupid thing. Like I said for really new players it must be more frustrating then anything else... 

[mikawa]

I think the tutorials are a great way to learn the game mechanics though.

As I learned sailing, there were no tutorials only a few videos on youtube and it was a really hard process. The tutorials let you test all the important sail settings quite easy. Of course it will take you time, as me in former days, to get the ability to use them right in battles.

The final exam is hard but this is exactly what it aims at: that you practice over ans and over again and believe me this practice will give you the basic skills to survive in a real PVP fight for more than 5 minutes.

[Teutonic]

I think everyone has trouble with thinking they have to do it as fast as possible.

The endurance and final exam are 1.5 hours length. You can absolutely take your time, give yourself space, repair when you can. I took 45 minutes and finished it through taking half that time to sail away while repairing to go back in.

Of course people will do it in record time, but there is nothig wrong with taking the full time you are given.

[Forlorn Hope]

That's if you are luck enough for them not to hang up, crash, or freeze. They are a joke, NOT worth the effort. Just put the same time into missions, at least they work.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Forlorn Hope said:

That's if you are luck enough for them not to hang up, crash, or freeze. They are a joke, NOT worth the effort. Just put the same time into missions, at least they work.

They are totally worth the effort. Im pretty sure they still give some pretty amazing rewards. 

[VirtuallyIdiotic]

10 minutes ago, Flinch said:

They are totally worth the effort. Im pretty sure they still give some pretty amazing rewards. 

They do and if you never have played the game before it does give you the very basic information which is ideal since it is quite a lot to feed a player right at the start. Developing a player from there should be left to the clan. 

[o Barão]

36 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

I think everyone has trouble with thinking they have to do it as fast as possible.

The endurance and final exam are 1.5 hours length. You can absolutely take your time, give yourself space, repair when you can. I took 45 minutes and finished it through taking half that time to sail away while repairing to go back in.

Of course people will do it in record time, but there is nothig wrong with taking the full time you are given.

Yes same thing happened to me. I made bad moves when boarding and i lost to many sailors. So i went on to waste many minutes to repair and replenish the crew. The funny thing was that i left 2 sailors in the other ship and they still managed to help me . XD

[John Hood]

Rage boarding for the win... after two tries using boarding it was done...

[Teutonic]

56 minutes ago, Forlorn Hope said:

That's if you are luck enough for them not to hang up, crash, or freeze. They are a joke, NOT worth the effort. Just put the same time into missions, at least they work.

the amount of repairs you get alone makes it worth it. the amount of time and effort it would take to do missions and grinding is a hell of a lot more than doing the tutorials and exams.

of the 10 people I know who did it, 1 person had trouble with a "crash" and we found later it was because they did not finish one of them in time. 

they work.

38 minutes ago, Flinch said:

They are totally worth the effort. Im pretty sure they still give some pretty amazing rewards. 

rewards after finishing all the tutorials and exams:

1,500 hull
1,500 rig
2,500 rum (?)

rattlesnake note
hercules note

280 crew rank 

looks pretty hello kittying good to me and always worth the effort.

 

[Barbancourt]

Took me the full 90 minutes to do it last year.  Will be LOL to see how long it takes now with the new damage model.

Edited June 14, 2019 by Barbancourt

[jodgi]

3 hours ago, Liberalism said:

Shooting angles are unreal and give a cringe feeling.

Yup.

It's even much, much worse than I demonstrated in that post in that thread. The bots have 60-70 deg. deflection.

[Angus MacDuff]

Bottom line is that it's mostly only experienced players seem to be succeeding with the final exam.  There are a few noobs who take advantage of the youtube guides, but not many.  I'm even seeing players complaining on global that they cannot get past the Dismasting tutorial.  I have to say that as a tutorial, this is a Fail. 

[Ahoy H.R. Matey]

They don't care. The devs have a delusion that this is Dark Souls with sails: if you can't handle stupid OP AI, GTFO because we don't need players like you, ha ha and ha. They outright said that the bots will always cheat and be overbuffed and if you want realistic combat (as advertised) you should only PvP.

[Tenet]

6 hours ago, John Hood said:

Oh and how suspicious... a russian player somehow managed to finish it in 10 min ? I woulder how the heck you do that  

Watch this video:

 

 

[Severus Snape]

While the final exam isn't really difficult, I do feel like the tutorials beforehand do a poor job prepping for that exam and the 4 previous trials.  

Presumably the tutorial, Exams and Final exam are the first couple hours of a new player's NA experience.  While they may seem trivial to us vets, I'm not so sure a new player with 3 hours experience is really ready to tackle cheating AI.  If a player that just picked up your game has to search for youtube for a video in the first couple hours of gameplay you've perhaps failed at the tutorial.  

It's been suggested on here before, but never really got much traction.  Tutorials, Exams and Final Exam should all be separate of each other and come into effect in various stages of gameplay.  Tutorials get the captain on the water and teach them how to navigate and open outposts/buy stuff.  Player gets a rank or 2.  Exams come into play as that player graduates out of cutters.  Final exam gets them into frigates.  

Also the final exam should give a ship that is not already a DLC one.  

[Aster]

For a veteran player doing the final in under 15 minutes is very doable as liqs video shows. As has been stated the tutorial should be part of a players first impression of the game. I think ideally they should be spiced up a bit almost like story missions with a named AI ship that you are learning from and is ordering you to do things. The combat sections could be made into you and that AI going on a patrol or something. Really just anything to make that first impression more interesting. Personally I remember my favorite thing to do as a new player was to take fleet missions as fighting in fleet battles just felt far more interesting.