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boomervoncannon

How does gating new content behind the final boss make the game more accessible for smaller companies?

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So some of the changes announced after wipe definitely seem likely to be improvements for small groups, but the decision to gate the new underwater content behind the kraken is a head scratcher. To start with, as a development/testing decision, why in the world would you want to gate your newest content during an Early Access period behind an endgame boss?  What percentage of your playerbase do you expect will ever successfully unlock said content? My personal experience of 15 years playing MMO's of this type suggests less than half. Moreover, what percentage will unlock it within 60 days of a total wipe? I'm gonna offer as a hypothesis that the percentage of the playerbase who are members of large companies focused on doing endgame content will correlate to an overwhelming degree with the unlock percentage, which is to say far less than half.  Do you want a significant percentage of your playerbase to actually test your new content or not? 

If the answer is yes than gating that content behind a final boss is boneheaded. Period.

If the answer is no, then why put it in in the first place?

 

Beyond how nonsensical this decision is from a testing perspective, it goes completely against the idea of making your game more accessible to smaller groups. The development team has the back end data sure, but are you REALLY telling us that you looked at the data for how many and which companies completed the kraken to date and it wasn't some miniscule percentage consisting almost entirely of some of the largest companies? I do not have access to the data myself, but this notion is one I am highly skeptical of. If that is what the data shows, then this decision further puts smaller groups in a have not category.

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I agree. I like the idea that you need to defeat the kraken first, that’s all good. But not now in EA. We are the testers, so let us test stuff. If it bugs out, that’s good. 

Edited by Percieval
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I absolutely hate that you need to kill the kraken to get a sub.

It penalizes every single solo and small company out there.  Especially since they cant even drive it if they were to save up and buy it from someone who did kill the kraken.

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1 minute ago, archaegeo said:

I absolutely hate that you need to kill the kraken to get a sub.

It penalizes every single solo and small company out there.  Especially since they cant even drive it if they were to save up and buy it from someone who did kill the kraken.

Agree, we've already waited so long for new content, and now that we get it. We have to kill the kraken first. And with the server wipe, that means no sub for a long time for most players. If they ever get it

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i would be ok with buying it from some big company, but you cant even drive it if you havent killed the kraken

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14 minutes ago, Percieval said:

I agree. I like the idea that you need to defeat the kraken first, that’s all good. But not now in EA. We are the testers, so let us test stuff. If it bugs out, that’s good. 

I am with you. As a released game design choice I actually like it if the Kraken is doable at that point by small groups, but as a testing phase choice it’s the kind of thing that makes one want to scream at the devs “I SHOULDNT EVEN HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA!”

Now excuse me while I go kick puppies.

13 minutes ago, archaegeo said:

i would be ok with buying it from some big company, but you cant even drive it if you havent killed the kraken

This makes me want to kick puppies, and I like puppies.

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what about u get into contact with other companies and kill the kraken together?

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2 minutes ago, Arykos said:

what about u get into contact with other companies and kill the kraken together?

Power stones still need to be collected. Presumably higher end ship component bp’s need to be farmed in order to build ships with a good chance to win (speculation. Haven’t done the boss but basing conjecture on other MMO boss requirements). These types of bosses typically aren’t just about having bodies foe the fight, they are about acquiring the things needed to win the fight and in that respect large companies have a huge manpower resource advantage.

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large companies always have a advantage in ressources.. there is nothing u can do against it... but be happy... they limited company on 250 and ally to max 8

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This content gating after a server wipe just clarifies to me how incompetent Grapeshot truly is.   Clearly they have not actually put a few hundred hours into actually playing their own game to understand how long it takes to do stuff.  😕

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The solution is simple.  Scale all the end game stuff to the amount of people and size of ship in the fight.  You bring 15 Galleons, the Kraken is a higher level.  You being one person on a Schooner, the Kraken is less powerful.  The idea would be that the difficulty be about the same regardless of whether you are a solo player or a Mega Company.  This should be the same with all endgame stuff.  Getting the power stones.  You bring a big group of people, you get a big fight. You go solo, you get a small fight.  Still likely harder for the solo guy as he still has to do it all, while the group sees it get easier as they defeat the enemies.  Starts out hard, but as enemies are defeated, it turns more in their favor. 

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13 minutes ago, Arykos said:

large companies always have a advantage in ressources.. there is nothing u can do against it... but be happy... they limited company on 250 and ally to max 8

I’m fully aware large companies have that advantage, but think about what that implies in inverse. Small companies will be unable to do the kraken either at all or in anything approaching a timely manner. If you have recently stated a goal of making the game more accessible to smaller groups, this can’t be anything but contrary to that goal.

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well tbh just communicate with some other people.... 30 people should be enough to kill it

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15 minutes ago, Arykos said:

large companies always have a advantage in ressources.. there is nothing u can do against it... but be happy... they limited company on 250 and ally to max 8

Good to know that just 2000 people fighting me 😊😂

The idea of member limitation is good, but something like 20 max without alliance would have been a real step in the right direction.

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I agree, they're drawing a line in the sand here and giving a big middle finger to small companies and solo players. Seems f'd up to me.  

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Did they not say/wright somewhere that you should be able to do stuff like that by joining others in quests/events or did i dream that ?

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1 hour ago, boomervoncannon said:

Power stones still need to be collected. Presumably higher end ship component bp’s need to be farmed in order to build ships with a good chance to win (speculation. Haven’t done the boss but basing conjecture on other MMO boss requirements). These types of bosses typically aren’t just about having bodies foe the fight, they are about acquiring the things needed to win the fight and in that respect large companies have a huge manpower resource advantage.

Only 1 person needs to have 7 or 8 stones (can't remember off hand) to get the Kraken to spawn.  You don't need high end BP ships to kill it and you don't even need a lot of ships.  We've cleared it 3 times on NA PvP, twice with only 3 ships used (3 brigs).  The Kraken is not hard at all, just learn the fight and the mechanics and it's easy even for smaller companies.

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14 minutes ago, iLL said:

Only 1 person needs to have 7 or 8 stones (can't remember off hand) to get the Kraken to spawn.  You don't need high end BP ships to kill it and you don't even need a lot of ships.  We've cleared it 3 times on NA PvP, twice with only 3 ships used (3 brigs).  The Kraken is not hard at all, just learn the fight and the mechanics and it's easy even for smaller companies.

putting that aside locking content for a lot of the players behind killing end game boss is bad game design , wether the kraken is doable for small groups or big groups isnt the issue here, its the fact bad game design is stopping players accessing content they deserve / paid for 

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17 minutes ago, Vidar said:

Yep this is my point. Don´t get how it can so hard to understand.

 

34 minutes ago, UDO said:

putting that aside locking content for a lot of the players behind killing end game boss is bad game design , wether the kraken is doable for small groups or big groups isnt the issue here, its the fact bad game design is stopping players accessing content they deserve / paid for 

Content locked behind doing something is pretty normal in MMOs. U want to progress? Work for it. Kraken is perfectly killable with 3 ships so where is that disadvantage of smaller tribes? It takes longer to collect everything needed for summoning him? Oh man, why would people create companies with 50 members if they could kill Kraken with the same effort with 3 people? 

MMOs always give priority to teams of players. It´s the concept of MMO.

Why do players always want everything for free? 

Do World of Warcraft players all enjoy end game content? Not at all. Because if u don´t want to work for it you simply won´t get that. 

Edited by Willard

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9 minutes ago, Willard said:

 

Content locked behind doing something is pretty normal in MMOs. U want to progress? Work for it. Kraken is perfectly killable with 3 ships so where is that disadvantage of smaller tribes? It takes longer to collect everything needed for summoning him? Oh man, why would people create companies with 50 members if they could kill Kraken with the same effort with 3 people? 

MMOs always give priority to teams of players. It´s the concept of MMO.

Why do players always want everything for free? 

Do World of Warcraft players all enjoy end game content? Not at all. Because if u don´t want to work for it you simply won´t get that. 

All of this is true.

For a finished game. 

Gating new content behind an endgame boss during a testing/development cycle is still nonsensical. ILl’s information that the Kraken is not as difficult as I had believed (thanks for sharing that btw ILL) does mean the decision is less problematic to some degree, but that doesn’t change the fact that gating new content you want tested is just dumb. 

It does give me new perspective that the decision may be neutral with regard to company size. Assuming ILL has accurately described the difficulty level I’m willing to withdraw my objection in that regard. Personally in a finished product I’d actually prefer a difficulty level that did require improved ships to some degree as in pve it would provide additional purpose to farming SOD’s. But that’s in a finished product. At this point a more defeatable boss makes greater sense to me.

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1 hour ago, UDO said:

putting that aside locking content for a lot of the players behind killing end game boss is bad game design , wether the kraken is doable for small groups or big groups isnt the issue here, its the fact bad game design is stopping players accessing content they deserve / paid for 

What about powerstones?  All the videos I've seen, it takes several players to go it.  I hate that the strategy is somebody having to sacrifice to kite the baddies away.

 

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2 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

What about powerstones?  All the videos I've seen, it takes several players to go it.  I hate that the strategy is somebody having to sacrifice to kite the baddies away.

 

I almost didn’t recognize you cause you finally changed your avi. 🤪 Speaking as a notorious parrot racist, thanks.

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While its not explicitly stated i think they are making the first crack at kracken much easier, so that a small company can do it, maybe even solo it with a gal or brig.

Thats why they made a new set of underwater power stones, that kracken will probably be as hard as the present one is.

The first one will probably just be a grind for the surface powers stones with an easyish kacken fight.

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