Salty Del

Having played a reasonable amount on the PvP PTR servers this weekend, I thought I’d share my thoughts on it as feedback, as well as get others to talk about their thoughts as well. I had been having some frame rate issues on the live servers that I could not fix. My wife’s laptop was buttery smooth, while my tower was stuttering, and my PC is significantly more powerful than hers. Maybe something else, but I’ll chalk this up to performance improvements in the patch. The new claim system. If you own the claim, it’s a good system. Upkeep can be a bit excessive on medium to large sized islands for solo/small company players, but small islands are easily manageable. So far as I could tell, the gold cost to claim an island is on a sliding scale multiplier. The more island points it is, the higher the multiplier for the gold to purchase and upkeep the claim. The scale seems to be around 2.x for the smaller islands to maybe 4x for the larger islands. For example, we claimed a 53 point cost island. The upkeep cost is 162 gold. I think the purchase cost was the same, but I wasn’t paying attention. To happy to have found an open claim we thought we could afford. 162/53 gives you 3.06 as a multiplier. The bigger island we first looked at had a multiplier of about 3.6, and the smaller island we looked at after had a multiplier of about 2.3ish. If you don’t own the claim, settling on a claimed island is a step up from lawless. Kind of. Yes, the claim owner has a period to demolish your structures and you have no recourse at all. But, I think some claim owners will realize that having other groups on the island are mutually beneficial. The claim owner and other settlements do not have to worry about building deterioration (possibly PvP only), and the claim owner can mediate between settlements having a disagreement. Or just blast them both to bits for annoying them (PvP only). The tax rate. Oh, the tax rate. If you thought it was bad before, have I got news for you. The 30% tax rate was bad enough, but the developers didn’t agree. So, they made it worse, by increasing the tax rate to 50% max. I think that there’s a couple of side effects to the tax rate though. A low tax rate does make sense. I think that 10 to 15% is a fair tax rate (we set ours to 10%). My reasoning is that the claim owner has to pay upkeep on the island every 12 hours in gold. The smallish island we claimed was 162 gold every 12 hours. If you’re not online for 3 days, you have to have 972 gold sitting on the claim flag to pay for it. Imagine how much you’d need for a two week holiday. Easy enough at 6x rates, but when they go back to 1x that could become difficult for some. If you have somewhat limited play time, a not insignificant amount has to be spent on getting gold to pay upkeep. The taxes do offset that effort by providing the claim owner resources that they may not otherwise have time to gather themselves. The other side effect is that if an island has 50% taxes, you can be reasonably certain they don’t want anybody else settling on their island. Do gems exist on the PTR at all? Across several islands on several different servers, in several biomes, we could not find any gems at all. Was this intentional to prevent people using the war declaration? We had originally planned on settling in the south-east temperate, it the metal there is silver, which requires gems to make alloy. The new ships of the damned are really nice. They’re all still relatively easy to kill without many problems, except that now you’re more likely to encounter small fleets than just individual ships that just happen to be in the same area. The galleons do drop enough gold to be somewhat worthwhile. Oh, just make sure to stay out of range of the galleons. They have a lot more cannons than the brigantine ships do. The shipwrecks are a nice addition. You can stop your ship above them and freedive down for the treasure. The treasure is just an upgrade of the flotsam loot, but enough so that we always tried to get them when we came across them. The diving suit I would say is a must have for treasure seekers. We’ve found three variations of the sunken ships so far, with each having a different path to the treasure. The large stone walls are a nice addition for those that feel the need to hide behind massive walls. Fewer parts than gates, and I think they look a lot better than a wall of gates. Less flexibility for exit strategies in PvP though. We sailed through a golden age ruins server, and I thought at first that the dark islands on the map were placeholders for islands that weren’t ready yet. We sailed towards it and saw nothing in the water there, except for a bit of a glow like you sometimes see on the islands. I didn’t realize until a few minutes later that that was actually one of the ocean trenches. I don’t think the diving suit goes for enough for you to get into the trench, just to the top edge of it, but we didn’t try. I know there were several other small things that I noticed, like the fine treasure maps seemed to have more army of the damned than they used to, but those were the bigger ones that I found. If you played on the PvP PTR this weekend, what did you think?

We spent hours trying to find gems in the south-east servers. Originally, that’s where we had identified as our ideal location when the patch goes live. But, the metal in those servers is silver, which requires gems to make alloy. No alloy, no ship mounted weapons. No ship mounted weapons..... You must have built a large cannon. Medium cannons can swivel, to some extent, but large cannons cannot move at all. Why did they put them on wheels though? I was also completely unaware of a 20 minute timer when placing a cannon down in PvP. Is that only when in combat?

TL; DR - We had a relatively mild PvP experience and survived without a scratch. Not everybody can play PvP, even if they want to. Don’t shaft PvE players solely to benefit PvP players. Read on at your own discretion, It was relatively unremarkable, but it reinforced to me that while I was mildly interested, PvP is not for me. We ended up in a golden age ruins, forgetting it was a golden age ruins in our quest for buried treasure. We risked a sunken ship spawn to see what the drops there were like compared to the rest of the ocean (spoiler alert, no difference in loot at all). My first mate stripped and used the diving suit to go down and retrieve the booty. Despite being between two fleets of the damned, they never actually came close until we were leaving. As we sailed off in our brig, I noticed a schooner threading its way through the same fleets we had just avoided. It came to an almost parallel path to us, and was slowly catching up. As we got closer to the border, I saw that it’s rear was loaded with cannons, which made me watch him more closely, just in case. Not wanting to risk being caught unawares, I turned sharply with the wind, turning our course from the west to due north. When they started to turn, I knew they were going to try and sink us with their rear wall of cannons. Not being experienced at all in PvP ship combat, I did the only strategy I could think of to keep them from shooting us; I started tacking with the wind so that they had to keep changing directions to follow us. I had our four rear medium cannons start firing, hitting them several times, and it seemed like they were going to back off, until they started coming about again. The problem for us was that, unknown to him we had just taken down four of the galleons of the damned, as well as a few schooners. We had 26 cannonballs left to fight them off at the start, and we were now down to 10. So I sailed for the border, and after crossing turned due south, as we were near the southern border as well. As were were comin*up to the southern border, I saw them enter, and then shortly after start turning towards us. My first mate was telling me that she thought they were giving up, but I didn’t agree and decided to try and lose them in a quick series of border crossings. We ended up going east, and then north, back into the golden age ruins. We sailed north for a short ways, and then turned west to follow our original course, with the schooner no longer in sight. We made it home safely, docked, and then started makin our plans for when the servers go live, based on our experiences. I know, hardly a riveting story of daring and heroic battles. It cemented in me that while we absolutely love playing the game, PvP is not for us. When he started turning to chase us down, at first I wasn’t too bad, but shortly after it really triggered my anxiety. So much so that my hand holding my mouse was shaking uncontrollably. My first mate had already complained a couple of times about me risking our ship, to which I emended her that this was all temporary at best; I wasn’t worried about losing the ship or anything on it at all. We hadn’t even been fired on through the whole encounter. And I guess this is the real reason I’m posting this. I know that as soon as the PvE servers are back online, we’ll be on and back to adventuring on the high seas, and loving every adventure. When they took down the EU PvP servers to setup the PvP test server, at least the NA PvE servers were still up for those that wanted to play. But, then they took down the NA PvE servers to set them up for Monday for testing, leaving PvE players with nowhere to go except to try their luck in PvP for the weekend. They left the EU and NA PvP servers up, and then added a third PvP test server, all at the cost of the PvE players. I’m sure that I’m not the only person that can have a negative psychological impact from PvP, and I would describe mine as mild at its worst, but I can see that others may have worse reactions, Possibly bad enough to give up on the game entirely. I would just ask that the developers not completely shaft the PvE players so obviously. Some of us PvE players are actually interested in the idea of PvP, but for varied reasons may not be able to actually partake in PvP combat. The reality is that I, and others like me, are unable to get any enjoyment out of actual PvP combat. Not necessarily because we suck, or that we don’t want to risk losing our precious ship, but because we may have a strong psychological and/or physiological reaction to an interpersonal, combative situation. Or perhaps have a physical condition that limits the ability to be competitive in PvP combat, but PvE is doable. No, nobody forced us to play on the PvP servers. We could have waited until Wednesday for the PvE servers to be up, when we’re working long days and would not have the time or ability to try out the changes so that we know how things will (possibly) work when the update goes live. We knew what we were getting into, I just had no idea that I’d have that reaction. Holy crap. That turned out much longer than I thought it was going to be. If you’re still reading this, congratulations! Meet me on the NA PvE servers when the patch is live and I’ll give you a present. Maybe some thing small, maybe something big. But probably something small.

We plan on trying to get an island for ourselves, but part of it will be a public dock with full crafting capabilities and space for npc vendors. Or, if my assumptions that it’s an NPC that you can place anywhere are incorrect, then ample space for vendor huts. I can definitely see a network of vendor hubs popping up, with the potential for making profit just by buying local resources cheap from a vendor in one area and then selling them in your own vendor where they’re worth more. If such a thing is possible and happens, I think it would be appropriate for the Freeport commodities vendor to either drastically increase the costs for the convenience, or be dropped entirely so that an actual player economy can be created.

Well, have I got news for you then. You see, much like Santa.....

Hmm. Did they ever say specifically April 4th, 2019? Maybe they’re actually almost a year ahead of schedule.

You've just been Jat-trolled! (No, I don't blame you Jat)

Maybe they forgot to fill out the TPS report.

The PTR is a lie. The cake is now the truth.

It absolutely works that way. It's the Infinity Gauntlet. They can do what they want while wearing it. They could snap while wearing it and release Atlas 1.5, easy as *snap*

Ok, so Jat snaps the Infinity Gauntlet, wiping half of the servers. He then passes the gauntlet to Dollie, who also snaps the Infinity Gauntlet wiping the other half of the servers. Unless Jat decides to be a gentleman and lets Dollie go first. Or he can be a proper pirate and just go first himself, because why not?

Picture no more! Bask in the glory of Jat wielding the Infinity Gauntlet! Are you ready for the Snappening 2.0?

Should we euthanize our crew and tames once the PTR hits, or let them live until Jat and Dollie each take a turn playing Thanos? They both get to wipe out half the population that way.

Not that it matters, as these servers are only expected to be up for about a week anyways.

I doubt that the PTRs will be regional. I’m just expecting one for each of their intended game types, so three PTR servers total.

You’re supposed to wipe after every time you’ve done a number two.

That’s great to hear, thanks! I do agree with Microphobe that alliance chat could be improved, if no changes are forthcoming in patch 1.5. Custom channels with the option of password protecting them would be great. Being able to see who is in a channel would be nice as well.

We’re still playing a bit here and there, but not as much as we were before, and definitely not as much as we will after the wipe. We’ve been able to get in on a couple of Kraken kills (thanks again, Jean!), and we’ve been able to try out a few different ship designs to figure out what ship sizes and configurations work for us. Though we’ll most likely end up with a small fleet again anyways, just because I like building ships so much. When the PTR goes up, we’ll be on it figuring out how best to get started when the patch goes live. If we’re able to get our own island, I’ve been thinking about a way to divy it up into plots for people without completely ruining it by covering resource nodes. I think I’ve got something workable, but we’ll see how well it actually works. We’re very much looking forward to being able to start anew, and with the experience we’ve got now we should be able to get back to where we are now relatively quickly. I’ve heard at least one group is going to try to get to the kraken in the first 24 hours, and my hats off to them for even attempting that. That would be quite the feat.

Thanks again for another successful run! Too bad it was so glitchy on the first one. Was anybody else noticing that the electricity sometimes affected you when the tentacles emerged, despite the tentacle nearest you not being electrified?

Kat and I will be there.

The only problem is that you cannot anchor on building parts. Our first claim we could build on was shallow enough, but there was no mapping to allow anchoring, except at very specific locations that were right beside a shallow spot to sink your brig if you missed. I built a large structure of pillars and ceilings under the brig, and could never get an anchor point.

Because he knows you can’t see and are hard of hearing.

They locked wearing better gear behind the skill needed to make the gear yourself. I think that changing the skill to USE the gear to a skill to MAKE the gear would be a bigger concern than being able to drive the submarine for creating an economy. What concerns me most about the kraken battle to unlock the submarine on PvE is that we won’t have alliances for the smaller companies to work together. How will that work? I forgot to add that when I saw the topic, my mind went to Oprah saying “You get a submarine! And you get a submarine! And you get a submarine!”

I am now going to spend all of my time playing shouting “the end is nigh! Repent for your sins before the reckoning is at hand!” in global chat very 5 minutes.

When the PTR goes up, I’d like to have four companies ready to do some testing of the new mechanics. We’ll need two companies that will own one island each in the same grid, and two companies that will act as settlers on both islands. One island owning company will try to be a “good” owner/maintainer, the other island company will try to be a “bad” owner/maintainer. One settler company will try to be “good” settlers, the other settler company will be naughty little griefers. This can be a way to test the extremes of the system, and find ways that players can grief others, either as an owner or a settler, before it goes live. And hopefully fix some of the worst ones before that happens. If you’d like to volunteer, please sign up below. In the interests of fairness, I’ll do a drawing for the teams so that people are assigned as evenly as I can get them. I wonder if we can get Jat or Dollie to agree to a single dedicated server for the week to try this on.